y alacrity in shaking them off. The old voice wandered on, every word
telling on its hearer and rousing a memory. "We must have been eight
then. Phoebe tied a thread of silk round the tooth, and the other end to
the drawer-knob ... it was such a little tooth ... long and long before
you were born, my dear...." Her knowledge of the present was on its way
back, and she thought the hand that held hers was her new-found
daughter's. "It was the drawer where the knitting-wool was kept."

If you who read this are old, can you not remember among the
surroundings of your childhood things too trivial for the maturities of
that date to give a passing thought to, that nevertheless bulked large
to you then, and have never quite lost their impressiveness since? Such
a one, to old Phoebe, was "the drawer where the knitting-wool was kept."
Some trifle of the sort was sure to strike home its proof of her
sister's identity. Chance lighted on this one, and it served its turn.

Ruth heard her cry out--a cry cut short by her mother's:--"Oh, Phoebe,
Phoebe, I know it all now, and you'll know me." She started up from a
hurried compliance with her Cousin Keziah's wish that she should eat,
and went back quickly to the bedroom, to see the two old sisters again
locked in each other's arms.

They may have been but dimly alive to how it all had come about, but
they knew themselves and each other--twins wrenched asunder half a
century since, each of whom had thought the other dead for over forty
years.

CHAPTER XX

HOW GRANNY MARRABLE THOUGHT SHE OUGHT NOT TO GO TO SLEEP, BUT DID.
HOW A CRICKET WAS STILL AT IT, WHEN SHE WAKED. HOW MAISIE WAKED
TOO. HOW THEY REMEMBERED THINGS TOGETHER, IN THE NIGHT. A SKULL
TWENTY-SEVEN INCHES ROUND. HOW PHOEBE COULD NOT FORGIVE HER
BROTHER-IN-LAW, GOD OR NO! HOW IT HAD ALL BEEN MAISIE'S FAULT. THE
OTHER LETTER, IN THE WORKBOX, BEHIND THE SCISSORS. THE STORY OF THE
SCORPION. ALL TRUE! ONLY IT WAS MRS. STENNIS, WHO DIED IN AGONY.
ELIZABETH-NEXT-DOOR'S IMMOVABLE HUSBAND. HOW GRANNY MARRABLE WAS
RELIEVED ABOUT THAT SCORPION. HOW MAISIE'S HUSBAND HAD REALLY HAD A
DEVIL--A BLACK MAN'S--WHICH MAISIE'S SON HAD INHERITED. A NEW
INFECTION IN THINE EYE. HOW RUTH WENT FOR THE DOCTOR. HOW HE
RECOMMENDED GWEN, AS WELL AS THE MIXTURE

The two old twins knew it all now, so far as it would ever be a matter
of knowledge. They had got at the heart of each other'