couldn't he do to a fellow if
he had him to himself?"

Sammie laughed nervously.

"His boots are full of snakes, if I am not mistaken--but truly a bad
fellow. He must have been what we heard back by the cemetery."

"No. Not such a noise as that. That was a wailing cry. Perhaps--he
surely cannot have had his hand on any human being. Let us hurry on. The
devil must be hereabouts to-night."

The suburbs seemed again to be asleep. The wind came and went over the
rickety homes, sparsely scattered, and its moaning was made more dismal
by the long-drawn out howl of some sleepless cur.

At rare intervals a light gleamed from a window.

One window from which a light shone Gilbert Allison and his friend
looked into that night, and somehow that window remained always open in
the memory of each, with a bright light burning behind it.

It was a dreary little structure that stood close to the roadside, quite
alone. The window was only a square hole, and the feeble light inside
flickered as the wind blew through. There had been glass there once, no
doubt, but that glass and many other cheap glass windows had gone into a
better, richer piece of glass, and that hung in a respectable saloon.

Reflecting the decanters and red noses--and broken hearts? No! Ah, no!
Their reflection would have injured the trade. They remained where the
cheap glass had once been, and it was one of these hearts that Gilbert
Allison, late of the firm of Allison, Russell & Joy, caught a glimpse of
as he paused at the open window.

A woman sat on the floor in the middle of the room.

A woman of petrified misery. She gazed beyond the surrounding walls into
the happy past, the mournful future--into Heaven and Hell, or somewhere.

Close by her side lay the still warm body of the boy. She placed her
hands over his face, and, feeling the warmth, opened the tattered,
bloody little night-dress and pressed her ear over the heart--pressed it
closer and closer, but the heart was still.

She did not cry, this woman. Why should she? She knew the child was
better off. She lifted a corner of her garment and wiped the thick blood
from the face, then she pressed her lips to the lips, the cheeks, the
forehead, in long, loving, mother kisses. She drooped her head close
over the childish body, and drawing the soft arms around her neck held
them there. She stroked back the hair, and her hands were bloodstained.

Resting the child's body tenderly on the hard floor, she