will stand by you.

"He will come to you. He will hear the voice wherever he is, and he will
make you his wife. And the baby will make a man of him and give him
ambition and inspiration. Babies always provide for themselves, they
say. You will have trouble, and you will suffer from the gibes of
self-righteous people, and you will be cruelly blamed; but there is
only one way to expiate sin, my child, and that is to face its
consequences and pay its penalties in full. The only way to atone for a
wrong deed is to do the next right thing. Take good care of your
precious treasure. Good-by. His father will come soon. He will come.
Good-by. Oh, you enviable thing, you mother!"

And now she was gone. But she had left the baby's value enhanced, and
the mother's, too.

She had offered a price for the baby, and glorified the mother. The
lonely young country girl felt no longer utterly disgraced. She did not
feel that the baby was a mark of Heaven's disfavor, but rather of its
favor. She felt lonely no longer. The streets interested her no more.
Let those idle revelers go their way; let them dance and laugh. They had
no child of their own to adore and to enjoy.

If the baby's father came they would be married. If he delayed--well,
she would stumble on alone. The baby was her cross. She must carry it up
the hill.

Hilda felt entirely content, but very tired, full of hope that Webster
Edie would come to her, but full of contentment, too. She talked to the
baby, and he seemed to understand her now. She could not translate his
language, but he translated hers.

She slipped out of her day clothes and into her nightgown--and so to
bed. She fell asleep with her baby in her arms. Her head drooped back
and her parted lips seemed to pant and glow. The moon reached her
window and sent in a long shaft of light. It found a great tear on her
cheek. It gleamed on her throat bent back; it gleamed on one bare
shoulder where the gown was torn; it gleamed on her breast where the
baby drowsily clung.

There was a benediction in the moonlight.

DAUGHTERS OF SHILOH

I

Mrs. Serina Pepperall had called her husband twice without success. It
was at that hatefulest hour of the whole week when everybody that has to
get up is getting up and realizing that it is Monday morning, and
raining besides.

It is bad enough for it to be Monday, but for it to be raining is
inexcusable.

Young Horace Pepperall used to say that that was the reas