hat moment. The next
instant his whole frame quivered. What was the thought that had risen
unbidden within him? Better that his child should lie there cold and
lifeless than that it should fill this desolate house with joy and love?
Was he, then, so black a villain? God forbid! Yet it was better so.

"All is over now," said Mercy, and her hands fell from her face. She
turned her weary eyes full upon him, and added: "We have been punished
already."

"Punished?" said Hugh. "We?" There was silence for a moment; and then,
dropping his voice until it was scarcely audible, he said: "Your burden
is heavy to bear, my poor girl."

Her slight figure swayed a little.

"I could bear it no longer," she answered.

"Many a one has thought that before you," he said; "but God alone knows
what we can not bear until we are tried."

"Well, all is over now," she repeated listlessly.

She spoke of herself as if her days were already ended and past; as if
her orb of life had been rounded by the brief span of the little
existence that lay finished upon the bed. Hugh Ritson looked at her, and
the muscles of his face twitched. Her weary eyes were still dry; their
dim light seemed to come from far away.

"How I prayed that I might see my Ralphie," she said. "I thought surely
God had willed it that I should never see my child. Perhaps that was to
be my punishment for--all that had taken place. But I prayed still. Oh,
you would not think how much I pray! But it must have been a wicked
prayer."

She hid her face once more in her hands, and added, with unexpected
animation:

"God heard my prayer, and answered it--but see!" She pointed to the
child. "I saw him--yes, I saw him--die!"

Hugh Ritson was moved, but his heart was bitter. At that moment he
cursed the faith that held in bondage the soul of the woman at his side.
Would that he could trample it underfoot, and break forever the chains
by which it held the simple.

"Hugh," she said, and her voice softened, "we are about to part forever.
Our little Ralphie--yours and mine--he calls me. I could not live
without him. God would not make me do that. He has punished me already,
and He is merciful. Only think, our Ralphie is in heaven!"

She paused and bit her lip, and drew her breath audibly inward. Her face
took then a death-like hue, and all at once her voice overflowed with
anguish.

"Do you know, something whispered at that instant that God had not
punished us enough, that Ralphi