s she
prayed, lost in a mystical vision of the Lord Himself among them--there
on the cottage floor--stretching hands of pity over the woman beside
her, showing His marred side and brow.

Marcella alone sat erect, her whole being one passionate protest against
a faith which could thus heap all the crimes and responsibilities of
this too real earth on the shadowy head of one far-off Redeemer. "This
very man who prays," she thought, "is in some sort an accomplice of
those who, after tempting, are now destroying, and killing, because they
know of nothing better to do with the life they themselves have made
outcast."

And she hardened her heart.

When the spoken prayer was over, Mr. Harden still knelt on silently for
some minutes. So did Mary. In the midst of the hush, Marcella saw the
boy's eyes unclose. He looked with a sort of remote wonder at his mother
and the figures beside her. Then suddenly the gaze became eager,
concrete; he sought for something. Her eye followed his, and she
perceived in the shadow beside him, on a broken chair placed behind the
rough screen which had been made for him, the four tiny animals of
pinched paper Wharton had once fashioned. She stooped noiselessly and
moved the chair a little forward that he might see them better. The
child with difficulty turned his wasted head, and lay with his skeleton
hand under his cheek, staring at his treasures--his little, all--with
just a gleam, a faint gleam, of that same exquisite content which had
fascinated Wharton. Then, for the first time that day, Marcella could
have wept.

At last the rector and his sister rose.

"God be with you, Mrs. Hurd," said Mr. Harden, stooping to her; "God
support you!"

His voice trembled. Mrs. Hurd in bewilderment looked up.

"Oh, Mr. Harden!" she cried with a sudden wail. "Mr. Harden!"

Mary bent over her with tears, trying to still her, speaking again with
quivering lips of "the dear Lord, the Saviour."

The rector turned to Marcella.

"You are staying the night with her?" he asked, under his breath.

"Yes. Mrs. Mullins was up all last night. I offered to come to-night."

"You went with her to the prison to-day, I believe?"

"Yes."

"Did you see Hurd?"

"For a very few minutes."

"Did you hear anything of his state of mind?" he asked anxiously. "Is he
penitent?"

"He talked to me of Willie," she said--a fierce humanness in her
unfriendly eyes. "I promised him that when the child died, he should be
bur