t! Wasn't it on a Hallow Eve at
night that Rosa Blondelle, sleeping calmly in her bed, was mysteriously
murdered?" inquired Miss Tabby.

"Yes, yes," impatiently admitted the old lady.

"And wasn't it that same night in the storm that Sybil Berners fled away
from her home, some said driven mad by horror, and some said by
remorse?"

"Oh yes!" sighed the old lady; "and that was the worst thing as ever she
did in her life, for her flight was taken as a proof of conscious guilt.
I was very sorry she fled."

"Yes, but she was persuaded by those as was wiser than we. And besides,
what could she do but fly, when the evidence was so strong against her?
so strong that everybody believed her guilty? so strong that even when
she came forrard and give herself up, it convicted her, and she was
doomed to death! that beautiful, noble lady! and only spared until she
could bring her babe into the world--her babe born in the condemned
cell.

"I know it, I know it; but for all that, it was her first flight that
prejudiced people's minds against her."

"And do you remember, mother, that awful night when the child was born
in the prison? You and I and the prison doctor was with her in that
stone cell! And oh, how we prayed that she might die! But she was
strong, and could not die, nor could the babe. Both lived."

"Yes, thank Heaven! despite our short-sighted, sinful prayers, both
lived," fervently exclaimed Mrs. Winterose.

"But that awful night of storm and flood, when the condemned mother gave
birth to the child in the condemned cell, that awful night was also
Hallow Eve, and do you mind how, when all was over, and, the baby was
dressed and the mother was lying in stupor, how you had to leave us, and
go away in the storm to tend my father's sick-bed?"

"Ah, child, don't I remember it all!"

"And now I'm going to tell you what happened after you left!"

"Why, Tabby, you never would tell us before," said Mrs. Winterose,
taking off her spectacles and becoming very attentive.

"No, mother, because I was bound by an oath. It is true, the man I made
the oath to released me from keeping of it! But still I never did feel
free to tell all I knew until to-night."

"And why to-night, Tabby?"

"Because it is borne in upon my mind that something will happen on this
very Hallow Eve to clear up the whole mystery, that I feel free to
reveal my part of it!"

"But what makes you feel as if something was going to happen to reveal
the sec