“Can it be that she has killed her own child!” thought Maggie, and starting to her feet she stood face to face with Hagar, who screamed:  “You here, Maggie Miller!—­here with the others who know my secret!  But you shan’t wring it from me.  You shall never know it, unless the dead rise up to tell you.”

“Hagar Warren,” said Margaret sternly, “is murder your secret?  Did Hester Hamilton die at her mother’s hands?”

With a short gasping moan, Hagar staggered backward a pace or two, and then, standing far more erect than Margaret had ever seen her before, she answered:  “No, Maggie Miller, no; murder is not my secret.  These hands,” and she tossed in the air her shriveled arms, “these hands are as free from blood as yours.  And now go.  Leave me alone with my dead, and see that you tell no tales.  You like secrets, you say.  Let what you have heard to-night be your secret.  Go.”

Maggie obeyed, and walked slowly homeward, feeling greatly relieved that her suspicion was false, and experiencing a degree of satisfaction in thinking that she too had a secret, which she would guard most carefully from her grandmother and Theo.  “She would never tell them what she had seen and heard—­never!”

Seated upon the piazza were Madam Conway and Theo, the former of whom chided her for staying so late at the cottage, while Theo asked what queer things the old witch-woman had said to-night.

With a very expressive look, which seemed to say, “I know, but I shan’t tell,” Maggie seated herself at her grandmother’s feet, and asked how long Hagar had been crazy.  “Did it come upon her when her daughter died?” she inquired; and Madam Conway answered:  “Yes, about that time, or more particularly when the baby died.  Then she began to act so strangely that I removed you from her care, for, from something she said, I fancied she meditated harm to you.”

For a moment Maggie sat wrapped in thought—­then clapping her hands together she exclaimed:  “I have it; I know now what ails her!  She felt so badly to see you happy with me that she tried to poison me.  She said she was sorely tempted—­and that’s the secret which is killing her.”

“Secret!  What secret?” cried Theo; and, womanlike, forgetting her resolution not to tell, Maggie told what she had seen and heard, adding it as her firm belief that Hagar had made an attempt upon her life.

“I would advise you for the future to keep away from her, then,” said Madam Conway, to whom the suggestion seemed a very probable one.

But Maggie knew full well that whatever Hagar might once have thought to do, there was no danger to be apprehended from her now, and the next day found her as usual on her way to the cottage.  Bounding into the room where the old woman sat at her knitting, she exclaimed:  “I know what it is!  I know your secret!”

There was a gathering mist before Hagar’s eyes, and her face was deathly white, as she gasped:  “You know the secret!  How?  Where?  Have the dead come back to tell?  Did anybody see me do it?”