derly as if he were the dainty little count whom she had
tended years before.

The thought was forced upon Fausch that the room looked just as the
other had, in which Maria lay dead. Only it was smaller. The room was
flooded with moonlight, and the radiance lay on the child's little bed
as it had on the bed of the dead mother. On the bright pillow lay the
little head, framed in soft, golden, downy hair. The face was full yet
delicate and the lines had the same beauty as the mother's face, as it
had lain there--also in the moonlight.

But in the living face there was something that enhanced its beauty
beyond that of the other face. The light was so clear that the rising
and falling of the chest was visible under the knitted jacket. Every
breath could be seen as it distended the delicate satiny cheeks and
passed from the little mouth; and at every inward breath the lips
parted like the calyx of a flower.

Fausch looked at the child for a while, and for a moment it seemed as
if the sight impressed him. He leaned forward involuntarily, as if in
joyful surprise, but then a curious change took place in him. His dark,
angular head came further forward, so that the moonlight struck his
square, stubborn brow. In the smith's face and bearing it was easy to
see how his own obstinacy was strangling the little pleasure that had
almost found its being.

"So that's the boy, is it? Cain Fausch?" said he. "You must be feeding
him well," he added, turning away and moving toward the stairs. As he
was starting to go down, he grumbled over his shoulder: "You needn't
have dragged me up here just for that."

The tears sprang to Katharine's eyes. She stared after him, her whole
face working. Then she went to the head of the stairs, and leaning
over, she called quickly after him: "Here, Fausch!"

"Yes?" he asked, pausing.

"No one must call him that when he is big enough to know--not that."

"What else then? See that you don't meddle! The name is short. And what
is, is!"

The smith stamped away toward the living room. In the clear moonlight
which now lay on the landing, Katharine could plainly see from above
his black woolly head. It passed through her mind that if one should
strike it with a sledge-hammer, the head would be the harder of the
two.

Nevertheless something of the picture that he had seen that evening
remained in Fausch's mind. The impression lingered for days and weeks,
and often occupied his thoughts. Once or twice