ds it out. I wonder William stands it."

What she said in reply I do not know. I was half way down the hall
before my own words were finished.

My next move was to go to my room and take from my trunk a tiny hammer
and some very small, sharp-pointed tacks. Curious articles, you will
think, for a woman to carry on her travels, but I am a woman of
experience, and have known only too often what it was to want these
petty conveniences and not be able to get them. They were to serve me an
odd turn now. Taking a half-dozen tacks in one hand and concealing the
hammer in my bag, I started boldly for William's room. I knew that the
girls were not there, for I had heard them talking together in the
sitting-room as I came up. Besides, if they were, I had a ready answer
for any demand they might make.

Searching out his boots, I turned them over, and into the sole of each I
drove one of my small tacks. Then I put them back in the same place and
position in which I found them. Task number one was accomplished.

When I issued from the room, I went as quickly as I could below. I was
now ready for a talk with the girls, whom I found as I had anticipated,
talking and weeping together in the sitting-room.

They rose as I came in, awaiting my first words in evident anxiety. They
had not heard me go up-stairs. I immediately allowed my anxiety and
profound interest in this matter to have full play.

"My poor girls! What is the meaning of this? Your mother just dead, and
the matter kept from me, her friend! It is astounding--incomprehensible!
I do not know what to make of it or of you."

"It has a strange look," Loreen gravely admitted; "but we had reasons
for this deception, Miss Butterworth. Our mother, charming and sweet as
you remember her, has not always done right, or, what you will better
understand, she committed a criminal act against a person in this town,
the penalty of which is state's prison."

With difficulty the words came out. With difficulty she kept down the
flush of shame which threatened to overwhelm her and did overwhelm her
more sensitive sister. But her self-control was great, and she went
bravely on, while I, in faint imitation of her courage, restrained my
own surprise and intolerable sense of shock and bitter sorrow under a
guise of simple sympathy.

"It was forgery," she explained. "This has never before passed our lips.
Though a cherished wife and a beloved mother, she longed for many things
my father co