nce beneath those fatal doors a thought had come.
I remembered my heritage. I remembered how I had been told by
my father when I was a very little girl,--I presume when he first
felt the hand of death upon him,--that if ever I was in great
trouble,--very great trouble, he had said, where no deliverance
seemed possible--I was to open a little golden ball which he
showed me and take out what I should find inside and hold it close
up before a picture which had hung from time immemorial in the
southwest corner of this old house. He could not tell me what I
should encounter there this I remember his saying--but something
that would assist me, something which had passed with good effect
from father down to child for many generations. Only, if I would
be blessed in my undertakings, I must not open the golden ball nor
endeavor to find out its mystery unless my trouble threatened death
or some great disaster. Such a trouble had indeed come to me,
and--startling coincidence--I was at this moment in the very house
where this picture hung, and--more startling fact yet--the
golden ball needed to interpret its meaning was round my neck--for
with such jealousy was this family trinket always guarded by its
owner. Why then not test their combined effect? I certainly needed
help from some quarter. Never would William allow me to be married
to another while he lived. He would yet appear and I should need
thus great assistance (great enough to be transmitted from father to
son) as none of the Moores had needed it yet; though what it was I
did not know and did not even try to guess.

"Yet when I got to the room I did not drag out the filigree ball at
once nor even take more than one fearful side-long look at the
picture. In drawing off my glove I had seen his ring--the ring you
had once asked about. It was such a cheap affair; the only one he
could get in that obscure little town where we were married. I
lied when you asked me if it was a family jewel; lied but did not
take it off, perhaps because it clung so tightly, as if in
remembrance of the vows it symbolized. But now the very sight of
it gave me a fright. With his ring on my finger I could not defy
him and swear his claim to be false the dream of a man maddened by
his experiences in the Klondike. It must come off. Then, perhaps,
I should feel myself a free woman. But it would not come off. I
struggled with it and tugged in vain; then I bethought me of using
a nail f