"I will not. She knows nothing of me
but my maiden name, the only name I will
ever own. She is alone, and she is dying;
because she loved my mother she sends for
me, begging me to be with her till she dies.
I shall go to her. She promises to leave me
all she has. I shall be rich again. It shall
all be for you, nurse. I shall ask nothing
of you but to keep that child always, letting
it grow up as your own."

"You call evil days upon yourself when
you take a lie upon you. If anything I
could say could turn your heart from doing
it, God put it in my heart to say that
thing!"

"Evil days!" she echoed, with a wild
little laugh. "What evil can seem to me
evil any more; what bitterness bitter?"

"And it's all vain trying," the older
woman went on. "You can't forget your
child. The mother's heart is in you.
Sooner or later it will waken. It will
trouble you when you think you've found
peace. My dearie, my dearie, better than
you know yourself I know you."

"The Scripture says a woman can
forget her child. If any woman, surely I,
to whom the father of that child was
hateful."

"It won't be so. Better than you know
yourself, indeed, I know you. The tender
heart that was like a mother's to the
baby-brother won't remain dead and cold to its
own flesh and blood."

"Oh, my brother! Oh, Wattie, Wattie,
Wattie! All the rest I could, perhaps,
have forgiven him, but not your death."
She broke now into passionate wailing.

When she looked up and spoke again
her face was harder, her tone harsher than
it had been before, and her eyes had a fierce
expression in them.

"You couldn't better quicken my hate
for him, and so my loathing for his child,
than by speaking to me of my young
brother," she said. "When I knelt on the
wet river-side grass by Wattie—my dead,
drowned, murdered Wattie—didn't I curse
that child's father? Didn't I vow—-"

"You were mad, you were mad! God,
in His mercy, would take no heed of you.
You were mad then; you are mad now.
If only you'd wait and do nothing till the
fever-fire has burnt out of your poor brain!
My dear, my dear, turn your back upon
the devil; shut your eyes and your ears to
the things he shows you and tells you;
put all these horrible thoughts from you;
turn to good things and to God."

"Well," she answered, with a daft sort
of smile, " the devil is dead, certainly—
didn't I see him die? But, nurse, not the
devil only, but God also is cruel, if He
won't let me forget."

"If only you'd take this little one He
sent you into your arms, and let it lie
against your heart, gentler thoughts would
come. It turns my blood to hear you talk,
and see you look with loathing upon this
soft, sweet, tender, helpless thing, and it
your own, too."

The child, awake now, was lying on the
woman's lap. It turned its head upon her
knee, and fixed its eyes upon its mother's
face. The little dark-eyed baby-face looked
elfish and wan in the moonlight.

"His eyes, his eyes!" the girl cried out,
as if in some intolerable torture. And she
sprang up, and went away, out of doors.

"They're no eyes but you own, your very
own. It's its mother's child all over, the
darling, the darling!" the woman crooned
over it.

It was not long before the girl came back.
Seeing, by the clear moonlight, that the
woman's tears were falling thick and fast,
she went behind her, twined an arm round
her neck, laid her cheek against the
tear-stained cheek, and whispered:

"Poor poor nursie, poor dear nursie,
you're thinking of your own poor little
baby, nurse."

"Thinking of my own lost pretty one
that I loved, so, that John loved so, and
that's lying now in the churchyard. Thinking
of it, I'm sorry for myself, and I'm
sorry for John, and I could cry my heart
out for the pity of it; but as for this poor
outcast from its mother's love, tears aren't
sad enough, nor bitter enough, to shed
for it."

"It will have you, nurse. You'll be a
better mother to it than I could ever be."

"And if I die? And I'm not strong as
I used to be, my dear. Sometimes I think
I'll never be well any more."

"If you die," the girl repeated slowly.
"Why then it will very likely die, too;
perhaps it may die first, even." Then she
suddenly asked, pointing to the child's
white dress, "Is there blood there, nurse?
Or is it only in my brain?"

"Your head's getting bad, my dear.
Can't you leave it all now, and let us settle
it to-morrow?"

"It's all settled, nurse. I go away, and
you keep the child. He's to grow up loving
you as his mother, and in time you'll forget
he's not your own son."

"And then, when I love him as my