ance, as if he had
suddenly been struck with a new fear.

"I--do not know," he stammered. "I--no! I do not know. What have I been
doing?"

He sank into a chair and buried his face in his trembling hands.

"God's curse is upon it," he cried. "There is no place for it on earth."

Tom rose with a sudden movement and began to pace the floor with his
charge in his arms.

"It's a little chap to lay a curse on," he said. "And helpless enough, by
Gad!"

He looked down at the diminutive face, and as he did so, a wild thought
flashed through his mind. It had the suddenness and force of a
revelation. His big body trembled with some feeling it would have gone
hard with him to express, and his heart warmed within him as he felt the
light weight lying against it.

"No place for it!" he cried. "By God, there is! There is a place
_here_--and a man to stand by and see fair-play!"

"Give her to me," he said, "give her to me, and if there is no place for
her, I'll find one."

"What do you mean?" faltered the man.

"I mean what I say," said Tom. "I'll take her and stand by her as long as
there is breath in me; and if the day should ever come in spite of me
when wrong befalls her, as it befell her mother, some man shall die, so
help me God!"

The warm Southern blood which gave to his brothers' love-songs the grace
of passion, and which made them renowned for their picturesque eloquence
of speech, fired him to greater fluency than was usual with him, when he
thought of the helplessness of the tiny being he held.

"I never betrayed a woman yet, or did one a wrong," he went on. "I'm not
one of the lucky fellows who win their hearts," with a great gulp in his
throat. "Perhaps if there's no one to come between us, she may--may be
fond of me."

The man gave him a long look, as if he was asking himself a question.

"Yes," he said at last, "she will be fond of you. You will be worthy of
it. There is no one to lay claim to her. Her mother lies dead among
strangers, and her father----"

For a few moments he seemed to be falling into a reverie, but suddenly a
tremour seized him and he struck one clenched hand against the other.

"If a man vowed to the service of God may make an oath," he said, "I
swear that if the day ever dawns when we stand face to face, knowing each
other, I will not spare him!"

The child stirred in Tom's arms and uttered its first sharp little cry,
and as if in answer to the summons, Aunt Mornin opened the d