grasped by
my hazy brain, the thought flashed to my mind:

"Now you'll hear of _her!_"

M.C.

[END OF MARTIN CONRAD'S MEMORANDUM]

NINETY-FIFTH CHAPTER

The door of No. 10 was opened by a rather uncomely woman of perhaps
thirty years of age, with a weak face and watery eyes.

This was Mrs. Oliver, and it occurred to me even at that first sight
that she had the frightened and evasive look of a wife who lives under
the intimidation of a tyrannical husband.

She welcomed me, however, with a warmth that partly dispelled my
depression and I followed her into the kitchen.

It was the only room on the ground floor of her house (except a
scullery) and it seemed sweet and clean and comfortable, having a table
in the middle of the floor, a sofa under the window, a rocking-chair on
one side of the fireplace, a swinging baby's cot on the other side, and
nothing about it that was not homelike and reassuring, except two large
photographs over the mantelpiece of men stripped to the waist and
sparring.

"We've been looking for you all day, ma'am, and had nearly give you up,"
she said.

Then she took baby out of my arms, removed her bonnet and pelisse,
lifted her barrow-coat to examine her limbs, asked her age, kissed her
on the arms, the neck and the legs, and praised her without measure.

"And what's her name, ma'am?"

"Mary Isabel, but I wish her to be called Isabel."

"Isabel! A beautiful name too! Fit for a angel, ma'am. And she _is_ a
little angel, bless her! Such rosy cheeks! Such a ducky little mouth!
Such blue eyes--blue as the bluebells in the cemet'ry. She's as pretty
as a waxwork, she really is, and any woman in the world might be proud
to nurse her."

A young mother is such a weakling that praise of her child (however
crude) acts like a charm on her, and in spite of myself I was beginning
to feel more at ease, when Mrs. Oliver's husband came downstairs.

He was a short, thick-set man of about thirty-five, with a square chin,
a very thick neck and a close-cropped red bullet head, and he was in his
stocking feet and shirt-sleeves as if he had been dressing to go out for
the evening.

I remember that it flashed upon me--I don't know why--that he had seen
me from the window of the room upstairs, driving up in the old man's
four-wheeler, and had drawn from that innocent circumstance certain
deductions about my character and my capacity to pay.

I must have been right, for as soon as our intro