dred pound, I shouldn't wonder.

_Mrs. Strongtharm_. T'cht!

_Mrs. Josselin_. He must be amazing fond of her. Fancy, my Ruth!
. . . It's a pity he's not home, to take the child.

_Mrs. Strongtharm_. Men at these times are best out o' the way.

_Mrs. Josselin_. When my first was born, Michael--that's my
husband--stayed home from sea o' purpose to take it. My first was a
girl. No, not Ruth; Ruth was born after my man died, and I had her
christened Ruth because some one told me it stood for "sorrow."
I had three before Ruth--a girl an' two boys, an' buried them all.

_Miss Quiney (listening)_. Hush!

_Mrs. Josselin (not hearing, immersed in her own mental flow)_.
If you call a child by a sorrowful name it's apt to ward off the
ill-luck. Look at Ruth now--christened in sorrow an' married, after
all, to the richest in the land!

_Miss Quiney (in desperation)_. Oh, hush! hush!

_A low moan comes from the next room. The women sit silent, their
faces white in the dawn that now comes stealing in at the window,
conquering the candle-light by little and little_.

_Mrs. Strongtharm_. I thought I heard a child's cry. . . . They cry
at once.

_Miss Quiney_. Ah? I fancied it, too--a feeble one.

_Mrs. Strongtharm (rising after a long pause)_. Something is
wrong. . . .

_As she goes to listen at the door, it opens, and the man-midwife
enters. His face is grave_.

_Mrs. Strongtharm and Miss Quiney ask him together, under their
breath_--Well?

_He answers:_ It is well. We have saved her life, I trust.

--And the child?

--A boy. It lived less than a minute. . . . Yet a shapely
child. . . .

_Miss Quiney clasps her hands. Shall she, within her breast, thank
God? She cannot. She hears the voice saying_,--

A very shapely child. . . . But the labour was difficult. There was
some pressure on the brain, some lesion.

They would have denied Ruth sight of the poor little body, but she
stretched out her arms for it and insisted. Then as she held it,
flesh of her flesh, to her breast and felt it cold, she--she, whose
courage had bred wonder in them, even awe--she who had smiled between
her pangs, murmuring pretty thanks--wailed low, and, burying her
face, lay still.

Chapter VI.

CHILDLESS MOTHER.

In the sad and cheated days that followed, she, with the milk of
motherhood wasting in her, saw with new eyes--saw many things
heretofore hidden from her.

She did not believe in any scri