lpless than she would otherwise have been; yet she was willing to
confess that she could never have done it alone. With all their care and
caution they were exhausted and breathless when they topped the
acclivity and Morelock saw the cabin in the pocket cove, with the great
tulip-tree in the dooryard bending and distorted and groaning like a
living thing in agony.

"Isn't it terrible!" he said; but Ardea's glance had gone beyond the
tortured tree to the shuttered windows and smokeless chimney of the
cabin.

"Oh, let us hurry!" she gasped; but at the gate of the tiny dooryard she
stopped in sudden embarrassment. "I can't take you into the house, Mr.
Morelock. Will you wait for me here--just a moment?"

He said "Certainly," as he had been saying it from the first. But it was
quite without prejudice to a healthy and growing curiosity. The small
adventure was taking on an air of mystery which thickened momently,
demanding insistently a complete rearrangement of his preconceived
notions of Miss Ardea Dabney.

She left him at once and made her way cautiously to the ice-encrusted
door-stone. What she saw, when she lifted the wooden latch and entered,
was what she had been praying she might not see.

On the small hearth was a heap of white ashes, dead and cold, and the
tomb-like chill of the tightly-closed room was benumbing. Asleep in the
fireplace corner, his little knees drawn up to his chin and his face
streaked with the dried tears, was the three-year-old baby who bore Tom
Gordon's name. And on the bed in the recess at the back of the room, her
hands clenched and her passionate face a mask of long-continued agony,
lay the mother.

Ardea was white to the lips and trembling when she retreated to the
door-stone and beckoned to her companion.

"Can you find the way back to Deer Trace alone?" she faltered. "There is
trouble here, as I feared there might be--terrible trouble and
suffering. Say to my cousin that I must have Aunt Eliza, if she has to
crawl here on her hands and knees. Then telephone for Doctor Williams,
at Gordonia. He'll come if you tell him the message is from me. Oh,
please go, quickly!"

[Illustration: "Oh, please go quickly!"]

He was waiting only for her to finish.

"Is it quite safe for you here?" he asked.

"Quite; but I shall die of impatience if you don't hurry!" Then her good
blood made its protest heard. "Oh, please forgive me! I don't forget
that you are my guest, but--"

"Not a word,