that you had better give them the
baby?'

"For answer, she patted the curly head and said, 'If I can fight
death for my baby, I can conquer in the fight to live. I shall keep
her. You may tell him that the child will not live in luxury but that
she shall know no want, and she shall have both the education and
culture which befits her father's child.'

"But the mother's heart was sore when she looked in the glass and saw
what a pitiful change had come to the pretty face. 'I am so glad it
came while Mary was little,' she said. 'Had it come later, she would
have minded my ugly face. Now she knows no better and she will grow
used to it.'

"So she was glad when I offered to have her come to live with us in
the distant city where none had known of her or of the awful fight
she was planning to make. We had taken a large house and there were
many things the mother could do with her stiff hands which gradually,
because of the long hours she spent on them, were beginning to limber
a bit. I gave her rooms for herself and the child and there she
lived, keeping away from all so that none might see her shrunken,
changed body. She lived only for the child, hoarding carefully the
little money that she could save lest there be not enough to send her
to college when the High School should be over.

"Often have I heard her praying for strength to fight through the
battle; often have I heard her pray that the little girl should grow
to be an honor to the family who would not help her; often have I
begged her to let me tell the child the story of the days that had
gone, but her answer was always the same, 'No. Let her live the
happy, care-free life. Some day I will tell her, but not now. It
would kill me to have her pity me. She must love me for myself and
not for what I did. My only happiness is to live and work for her.'

"So the heroine has spent the fifteen years and to my way of thinking
she is a mother of whom you may be proud.

"She must never know I have told you. But not for the world would I
have you add to her burden by thinking she was not all that you
wanted your mother to be.

"Sincerely,

"A. E. Morse."

When Mary had finished the letter, she sat as one stunned. Her mind seemed
on fire. Mechanically she picked up the pearls that she had thrown o