rd the
river of death that every other thought was lost in the great fear for
her. Then the two sisters, Hannah and Lucy, came, the latter giving all
her time to Geraldine, and the former devoting herself to the feeble
little child, whose constant wail so disturbed the mother that she
begged them to take it away where she could not hear it cry, it made her
so nervous.

Geraldine did not like children, and she seemed to care so little for
her baby that Hannah, who had loved it with her whole soul the moment
she took it in her arms and felt its soft cheek against her own, said to
her brother one day:

"I must go home to-morrow, but let me take baby with me. His crying
disturbs your wife, who hears him however far he may be from her room.
He is a weak little thing, but I will take the best of care of him, and
bring him back a healthy boy."

Burton saw no objection to the plan, and readily gave his consent,
provided his wife was willing.

Although out of danger, Geraldine was still too sick to care for her
baby, and so it went with Hannah to the old home among the rocks, where
it grew round and plump, and pretty, and filled the house with the music
of its cooing and its laughter, and learned to stretch its fat hands
toward the old grandfather, who never took it in his arms, or laid his
hands upon it. But Hannah once saw him kneeling by the cradle where the
child was sleeping, and heard him whisper through his tears:

"God bless you, my darling boy, and may you never know what it is to sin
as I have sinned, until I am not worthy to touch you with my finger.
Oh, God forgive and make me clean as this little child."

Then Hannah knew why her father kept aloof from his grandson, and pitied
him more than she had done before.

It was the first of October before Geraldine came up to Allington to
claim her boy, of whom she really knew nothing.

Only once since her marriage had she been to the farm-house, and then
she had driven to the door in her handsome carriage with the
high-stepping bays, and had held up her rich silk dress as she passed
through the kitchen into the "best room," around which she glanced a
little contemptuously.

"Not as well furnished as my cook's room," she thought, but she tried to
be gracious, and said how clean every thing was, and asked Hannah if she
did not get very tired doing her own work, and praised the dahlias
growing by the south door, and ate a few plums, and drank some water,
which she