tle to hide his feelings and make a show of cheerfulness and
geniality. She looked so small lying there so small and shrunken and
weary, and yet so child-like in her smallness. Tenderly, as he sat
beside her, he would take up her pale hand and stroke the slim,
transparent arm, marveling at the smallness and delicacy of the bones.

One of her first questions, puzzling alike to Billy and Mary, was:

"Did they save little Emil Olsen?"

And when she told them how he had attacked, singlehanded, the whole
twenty-four fighting men, Billy's face glowed with appreciation.

"The little cuss!" he said. "That's the kind of a kid to be proud of."

He halted awkwardly, and his very evident fear that he had hurt her
touched Saxon. She put her hand out to his.

"Billy," she began; then waited till Mary left the room.

"I never asked before--not that it matters... now. But I waited for you
to tell me. Was it...?"

He shook his head.

"No; it was a girl. A perfect little girl. Only... it was too soon."

She pressed his hand, and almost it was she that sympathized with him in
his affliction.

"I never told you, Billy--you were so set on a boy; but I planned, just
the same, if it was a girl, to call her Daisy. You remember, that was my
mother's name."

He nodded his approbation.

"Say, Saxon, you know I did want a boy like the very dickens... well,
I don't care now. I think I'm set just as hard on a girl, an', well,
here's hopin' the next will be called... you wouldn't mind, would you?"

"What?"

"If we called it the same name, Daisy?"

"Oh, Billy! I was thinking the very same thing."

Then his face grew stern as he went on.

"Only there ain't goin' to be a next. I didn't know what havin' children
was like before. You can't run any more risks like that."

"Hear the big, strong, afraid-man talk!" she jeered, with a wan smile.
"You don't know anything about it. How can a man? I am a healthy,
natural woman. Everything would have been all right this time if... if
all that fighting hadn't happened. Where did they bury Bert?"

"You knew?"

"All the time. And where is Mercedes? She hasn't been in for two days."

"Old Barry's sick. She's with him."

He did not tell her that the old night watchman was dying, two thin
walls and half a dozen feet away.

Saxon's lips were trembling, and she began to cry weakly, clinging to
Billy's hand with both of hers.

"I--I can't help it," she sobbed. "I'll be all right in a minute..