to her bed, "sickened for somethink" and died.

Three days after Emmerjane told me this story a great solemnity fell on
our street.

It was Saturday, when the children do not go to school, but, playing no
games, they gathered in whispering groups round the house with the drawn
blinds, while their mothers stood bareheaded at the doors with their
arms under their aprons and their hidden hands over their mouths.

I tried not to know what was going on, but looking out at the last
moment I saw Maggie Jones's mother, dressed in black, coming down her
steps, with her eyes very red and her hard face (which was seamed with
labour) all wet and broken up.

The "young minister" followed (a beardless boy who could have known
nothing of the tragedy of a woman's life), and stepping into the midst
of the group of the congregation from Zion, who had gathered there with
their warm Welsh hearts full of pity for the dead girl, he gave out a
Welsh hymn, and they sang it in the London street, just as they had been
used to do at the cottage doors in the midst of their native mountains:

"_Bydd myrdd o ryfeddodau
Ar doriad boreu wawr_."

I could look no longer, so I turned back into my room, but at the next
moment I heard the rumble of wheels and knew that Maggie Jones was on
her way to her last mother of all--the Earth.

During the rest of that day I could think of nothing but Maggie's child,
and what was to become of it, and next morning when Emmerjane came up
she told me that the "young minister" was "a-gettin' it into the 'ouse."

I think that was the last straw of my burden, for my mind came back with
a swift rebound from Maggie Jones's child to my own.

The thought of leaving my baby behind now terrified and appalled me. It
brought me no comfort to think that though I was poor my father was
rich, for I knew that if he ever came to know of my child's existence he
would hate it and cast it off, as the central cause of the downfall of
his plans.

Yet Martin's child alone, and at the mercy of the world! It could not
and must not be!

Then came a fearful thought. I fought against it. I said many "Hail
Marys" to protect myself from it. But I could not put it away.

Perhaps my physical condition was partly to blame. Others must judge of
that. It is only for me to say, in all truth and sincerity, what I felt
and thought when I stood (as every woman who is to be a mother must) at
the door of that dark chamber which is Life