you rest?"

"No, no; and we have had such a dreadful time since we got here. The
house where we expected to find you, is on fire, and we thought of
nothing else but that you had perished within it. But finally some one
told us to come here, and--" She paused horror-stricken; her eyes had
just fallen upon the little dead child and the moaning mother.

"That is Jacqueline Japha," whispered Mr. Sylvester. "We have found her,
only to close her eyes, I fear."

"Jacqueline Japha!" Paula's hands unclosed from his arm.

"She was in the large tenement house that burned first; that is her
child whose loss she is mourning."

"Jacqueline Japha!" again fell with an indescribable tone from Paula's
lips. "And who is that?" she asked, turning and indicating the silent
figure by the wall.

"That is Roger Holt, the man who should have been her husband."

"Oh, I remember him," she cried; "and her, I remember her, and the
little child too. But," she suddenly exclaimed, "she told me then that
she was not his mother."

"And she did not know that she was; the man had deceived her."

With a quick thrill Paula bounded forward. "Jacqueline Japha," she
cried, falling with outstretched hands beside the poor creature; "thank
God you are found at last!"

But the woman was as insensible to this cry as she had been to all
others. "My baby," she wailed, "my baby, my own, own baby!"

Paula recoiled in dismay, and for a moment stood looking down with fear
and doubt upon the fearful being before her. But in another instant a
heavenly instinct seized her, and ignoring the mother, she stooped over
the child and tenderly kissed it. The woman at once woke from her
stupor. "My baby!" she cried, snatching the child up in her arms with a
gleam of wild jealousy; "nobody shall touch it but me. I killed it and
it is all mine now!" But in a moment she had dropped the child back into
its place, and was going on with the same set refrain that had stirred
her lips from the first.

Paula was not to be discouraged. Laying her hand on the child's brow,
she gently smoothed back his hair, and when she saw the old gleam
returning to the woman's countenance, said quietly, "Are you going to
carry it to Grotewell to be buried? Margery Hamlin is waiting for you,
you know?"

The start which shook the woman's haggard frame, encouraged her to
proceed.

"Yes; you know she has been keeping watch, and waiting for you so long!
She is quite worn out and disheartened;