been laid away still crisp and fresh.

Over and over the time-yellowed muslin her work-knotted fingers passed
and repassed. Her touch was the touch of a mother upon her first-born,
and the years that had been between the day of his coming and this were
forgotten.

Katharine watching, understood. Her sympathy brought a moisture to her
own eyes, which now regarded the childless old woman in a new and
reverent light. Never again would Susanna be just the same to her young
housemate that she had been. The girl was learning life. Yesterday her
lesson--that not all of God's vagrants are vile; to-day--that all
sharp-tongued women are not viragoes.

After a time, said the widow, simply: "Them was my baby's," and softly
closed the drawer.

They were well on the way home when Susanna suddenly exclaimed:

"My suz! Ever see such a simpleton? I clean forgot to lock the door; an'
that kitchen-bedroom winder, I doubt that you went near it."

"No, I didn't. I forgot, too. Never mind, you sit here and rest. I'll
run back and fasten the whole house, and won't be long. Or you go on
toward home and I'll overtake you."

"Sure you just as lief? Well, I don't s'pose you would be afraid now,
after I've been there with ye to show you there wasn't nothin' nor
nobody there, an' I 'low I'd ought to be back soon's I can," responded
the housekeeper.

"Afraid? Why, it was you yourself was afraid, you dear old make-believe!
But go on, just the same. I'll make haste," cried Kate, laughing at the
other's altered mind, and immediately darting backward through the
forest toward the cottage.

The Widow Sprigg walked forward, slowly; pausing here to pick up a nut,
or there to examine a tree which she would tell Eunice might better be
felled. As she walked she became uneasy, feeling that she had really
imposed an unpleasant, possibly perilous, task upon the girl she scolded
so freely yet already loved so dearly. Gathering a sprig of wintergreen
she chewed it thoughtfully, and scarcely knew when she turned back to
retrace her own steps to the cottage and learn what had befallen
Katharine, who surely should have been in sight long before.

She came, at last, breathless and excited, catching the widow's arm and
dragging her farther into the wood, but saying nothing save that
imperative: "Come! Oh, come quick! Quick! We may be too late!"

Perforce the other "came," and there, on her kitchen-bedroom bed, lay
Marsden's "tramp," seemingly sick unto de