“Not always.  It came upon me with the secret,” Hagar answered inadvertently; and eagerly catching at the last word, which to her implied a world of romance and mystery, Maggie exclaimed:  “The secret, Hagar, the secret!  If there’s anything I delight in it’s a secret!” and, sliding down from the rude bench to the grass-plat at Hagar’s feet, she continued:  “Tell it to me, Hagar, that’s a dear old woman.  I’ll never tell anybody as long as I live.  I won’t, upon my word,” she continued, as she saw the look of horror resting on Hagar’s face; “I’ll help you keep it, and we’ll have such grand times talking it over.  Did it concern yourself?” and Maggie folded her arms upon the lap of the old woman, who answered in a voice so hoarse and unnatural that Maggie involuntarily shuddered, “Old Hagar would die inch by inch sooner than tell you, Maggie Miller, her secret.”

“Was it, then, so dreadful?” asked Maggie half fearfully, and casting a stealthy glance at the dim woods, where the night shadows were falling, and whose winding path she must traverse alone on her homeward route.  “Was it, then, so dreadful?”

“Yes, dreadful, dreadful; and yet, Maggie, I have sometimes wished you knew it.  You would forgive me, perhaps.  If you knew how I was tempted,” said Hagar, and her voice was full of yearning tenderness, while her bony fingers parted lovingly the shining hair from off the white brow of the young girl, who pleaded again, “Tell it to me, Hagar.”

There was a fierce struggle in Hagar’s bosom, but the night wind, moving through the hemlock boughs, seemed to say, “Not yet—­not yet”; and, remembering her vow, she answered:  “Leave me, Maggie Miller, I cannot tell you the secret.  You of all others.  You would hate me for it, and that I could not bear.  Leave me alone, or the sight of you, so beautiful, pleading for my secret, will kill me dead.”

There was command in the tones of her voice, and rising to her feet Maggie walked away, with a dread feeling at her heart, a feeling which whispered vaguely to her of a deed of blood—­for what save this could thus affect old Hagar?  Her road home led near the little burying-ground, and impelled by something she could not resist she paused at her mother’s grave.  The moonlight was falling softly upon it; and, seating herself within the shadow of the monument, she sat a long time thinking, not of the dead, but of Hagar and the strange words she had uttered.  Suddenly, from the opposite side of the graveyard, there came a sound as of someone walking; and, looking up, Maggie saw approaching her the bent figure of the old woman, who seemed unusually excited.  Her first impulse was to fly, but knowing how improbable it was that Hagar should seek to do her harm, and thinking she might discover some clew to the mystery if she remained, she sat still, while, kneeling on Hester’s grave, old Hagar wept bitterly, talking the while, but so incoherently that Maggie could distinguish nothing save the words, “You, Hester, have forgiven me.”