s of red-brown hair that framed her face
and crowned her shapely head. Here and there in the mass a carved silver
hair-pin showed itself, and Gilbert Allison found himself studying the
effect as he walked down the street; found himself puzzled as to why he
had stopped and noticed her hair or her. Evidently she had made an
impression on him. He tried, in a way, to analyze this, and finally gave
it up, yet found himself continually recalling the face in its frame of
red-brown hair.

He had known many charming women in his three and thirty years of life,
but he had never felt before the indescribable charm that had suddenly,
like the fragrance of a hidden violet, come to him for the unknown
singer in the dingy chapel. Gilbert Allison had guarded well his heart's
affections, but there comes a time in the lives of most men when the
heart refuses to be subject to the will and obstinately goes whither it
pleases. This man's heart was about to assert its rights. The daughter
of a Republican was to have a lover, for it was Miss Thorn who sang.

That Miss Thorn should sing had been the wish of the now lifeless
sleeper, and Jean had done her best.

All that was mortal of Maggie Crowley rested in the plain, dark coffin.
A life fraught with sorrow and tears and an innocent shame was ended; a
body racked with hunger and pain and cold was at rest. From the time of
her awful hurt, now a year ago, Maggie had been an invalid. The children
had gone out to work, and the frail mother had tried to cheer them as
she toiled in the valley of despair. A new sorrow had come into the
wretched home: Cora, yet a child in years, because she had a fair face
and a drunkard for a father, had been robbed of her one priceless
possession--her unspotted character--by a man whose name was familiar in
high circles, and whose hand was courted by more than one mother for
some cherished daughter.

From the time that her sister had bartered away her purity, in the
bitter, thankless battle that she fought for bread, Maggie had steadily
grown weaker, and when the mother knew the time was near at hand for her
to go she sent for Miss Thorn.

Jean had never been beside a death-bed, but she did not hesitate.

Maggie was lying, white and thin, upon the pillow. She looked eagerly
toward the door. Her eyes lit with a lingering light, and a faint smile
came around the corners of her drawn mouth when she saw that it was
Jean. She spoke slowly and softly, without much