I am, that last week I was James Adams, but now I am
James Travis. He will understand."

He came over to Helen gallantly--his blue eyes shining through a
smile which now lurked in them:

"This is Miss Conway, isn't it? I will see you out of this."

Then, taking her hand as if she had been his big sister, he led her
along the path to the road and to safety.

CHAPTER X

MARRIED IN GOD'S SIGHT

Night--for night and death, are they not one? A farm cabin in a
little valley beyond the mountain. An Indian Summer night in
November, but a little fire is pleasant, throwing its cheerful light
on a room rough from puncheon floor to axe-hewn rafters, but
cleanly-tidy in its very roughness. It looked sinewy, strong, honest,
good-natured. There was roughness, but it was the roughness of
strength. Knots of character told of the suffering, struggles and
privations of the sturdy trees in the forest, of seams twisted by the
tempests; rifts from the mountain rocks; fibre, steel-chilled by the
terrible, silent cold of winter stars.

And now plank and beam and rafter and roof made into a home, humble
and honest, and giving it all back again under the warm light of the
hearth-stone.

On a bed, white and beautifully clean, lay a fragile creature,
terribly white herself, save where red live coals gleamed in her
cheeks beneath the bright, blazing, fever-fire burning in her eyes
above.

She coughed and smiled and lay still, smiling.

She smiled because a little one--a tiny, sickly little girl--had come
up to the bed and patted her cheek and said: "Little mother--little
mother!"

There were four other children in the room, and they sat around in
all the solemn, awe-stricken sorrow of death, seen for the first
time.

Then a man in an invalid chair, helpless and with a broken spine,
spoke, as if thinking aloud:

"She's all the mother the little 'uns ever had, Bishop--'pears like
it's cruel for God to take her from them."

"God's cruelty is our crown," said the old man--"we'll understand it
by and by."

Then the beautiful woman who had come over the mountain arose from
the seat by the fireside, and came to the bed. She took the little
one in her arms and petted and soothed her.

The child looked at her timidly in childish astonishment. She was not
used to such a beautiful woman holding her--so proud and fine--from a
world that she knew was not her world.

"May I give you some nourishment now, Maggie?"

The girl sho