Ralphie!" she cried.

"Give me the baby, Mercy," said Greta.

But the mother clung to it with a convulsive grasp.

"Ralphie, Ralphie, Ralphie!..."

There was a sudden flash of some white thing. In an instant the bandage
had fallen from Mercy's head, and she was peering down into the child's
face with wild eyes.

"Ralphie, Ralphie!... Hugh!" she cried.

The mother had seen her babe at last, and in that instant she had
recognized the features of its father.

At the next moment the angel of God passed through that troubled house,
and the child lay dead at the mother's breast.

Mercy saw it all, and her impassioned mood left her. She rose to her
feet quietly, and laid the little one in the bed. There was never a sigh
more, never a tear. Only her face was ashy pale, and her whitening lips
quivered.

"Greta," she said, very slowly, "will you go for him?"

Greta kissed the girl's forehead tenderly. Her own calm, steadfast,
enduring spirit sunk. All the world was dead to her now.

"Yes, dear," she whispered.

The next minute she was gone from the room.

CHAPTER IX.

The evening was closing in; now and then the shrill cries of the birds
pealed and echoed in the still air; a long, fibrous streak of silver in
the sky ebbed away over the head of Hindscarth. Greta hastened toward
the pit-brow. The clank of the iron chain in the gear told that the cage
in the shaft was working.

It was a year and a half since her life had first been overshadowed by a
disaster more black and terrible than death itself, and never for an
instant had the clouds been lifted until three days ago. Then, in a
moment, the light had pierced through the empty sky, and a way had been
wrought for her out of the labyrinth of misery. But even that passage
for life and hope and love seemed now to be closed by the grim
countenance of doom.

Mercy would be blind forever! All was over and done. Greta's strong,
calm spirit sunk and sunk. She saw the impostor holding to the end the
name and place of the good man; and she saw the good man dragging his
toilsome way through life--an outcast, a by-word, loaded with ignominy,
branded with crime. And that unhappy man was her husband, and he had no
stay but in her love--no hope but in her faith.

Greta stopped at the door of Hugh Ritson's office and knocked. A moment
later he and she were face to face. He was dressed in his pit flannels,
and was standing by a table on which a lamp burned. When he