id tensely. "What do you
mean?"

"You think you know what's the matter with me." There was a curious
mockery in the weak voice. "You think I've drunk myself into this state.
You think I'm on the verge of the D.T.'s now. That empty bottle under
the bed proves it, doesn't it? And anybody around here will tell you
that Gypsy Nan has thrown enough empties out of the window there to
stock a bottle factory for years, some of them on the flat roof just
outside the window, some of them on the roof of the shed below, and some
of them down into the yard, just depending on how drunk she was and how
far she could throw. And that proves it, too, doesn't it? Well, maybe
it does, that's what I did it for; but I never touched the stuff, not a
drop of it, from the day I came here. I didn't dare touch it. I had to
keep my wits. Last night you thought I was drunk when you found me in
the doorway downstairs. I wasn't. I was too sick and weak to get up
here. I almost told you then, only I was afraid, and--and I thought that
perhaps I'd be all right to-day."

"Oh, I didn't know!" Rhoda Gray was on her knees beside the bed. There
was no room to question the truth of the woman's words, it was in Gypsy
Nan's eyes, in the struggling, labored voice.

"Yes." Gypsy Nan clutched at the shawl around her neck, and shivered.
"I thought I might be all right to-day, and that I'd get better. But I
didn't. And now I've got about a chance in a hundred. I know. It's my
heart."

"You mean you've been alone here, sick, since last night?" There was
anxiety, perplexity, in Rhoda Gray's face. "Why didn't you call some
one? Why did you even hold me back a few minutes ago, when you admit
yourself that you need immediate medical assistance so badly?"

"Because," said Gypsy Nan, "if I've got a chance at all, I'd finish it
for keeps if a doctor came here. I--I'd rather go out this way than
in that horrible thing they call the 'chair.' Oh, my God, don't you
understand that! I've seen pictures of it! It's a horrible thing--a
horrible thing--horrible!"

"Nan"--Rhoda Gray steadied her voice--"you re delirious. You do not know
what you are saying. There isn't any horrible thing to frighten you.
Now you just lie quietly here. I'll only be a few minutes, and--" She
stopped abruptly as her wrists were suddenly imprisoned in a frantic
grip.

"You swore it!" Gypsy Nan was whispering feverishly. "You swore it! They
say the White Moll never snitched. That's the one chanc