him, but cried
in anxious, frenzied tones: "Belton! there is your white child! Look
at him! Look at him!"

The boy looked up at Belton, and if ever one person favored another,
this child favored him. Belton was dazed. He looked from child to
mother and from mother to child. By and by it began to dawn on him
that that child was somehow his child.

His wife eyed him eagerly. She rushed to her album and showed him
pictures of the child taken at various stages of its growth. Belton
discerned the same features in each photograph, but a different shade
of color of the skin. His knees began to tremble. He had come, as the
most wronged of men, to grant pardon. He now found himself the vilest
of men, unfit for pardon.

A picture of all that his innocent wife had suffered came before
him, and he gasped: "O, God, what crime is this with which my soul is
stained?" He put his hands before his face.

Antoinette divined his thoughts and sprang toward him. She tore his
hands from his face and kissed him passionately, and begged him to
kiss and embrace her once more.

Belton shook his head sadly and cried: "Unworthy, unworthy."

Antoinette now burst forth into weeping.

The boy said: "Papa, why don't you kiss Mama?"

Hearing the boy's voice, Belton raised his eyes, and seeing his image,
which Antoinette had brought into the world, he grasped her in his
arms and covered her face with kisses; and there was joy enough in
those two souls to almost excite envy in the bosom of angels.

Belton was now recalled to life. He again loved the world. The cup of
his joy was full. He was proud of his beautiful, noble wife, proud of
his promising son. For days he was lost in contemplation of his new
found happiness. But at last, a frightful picture arose before him.
He remembered that he was doomed to die, and the day of his death
came galloping on at a rapid pace. Thus a deep river of sadness went
flowing on through his happy Elysian fields.

But he remained unshaken in his resolve. He had now learned to put
duty to country above everything else. Then, too, he looked upon his
boy and he felt that his son would fill his place in the world. But
Antoinette was so happy that he could not have the heart to tell her
of his fate. She was a girl again. She chatted and laughed and played
as though her heart was full of love. In her happiness she freely
forgave the world for all the wrongs that it had perpetrated upon her.

At length the day drew