right, no interest in it.  I tell you, Will, it is not all Cameron—­there is some Barlow blood in its veins—­Aunt Betsy Barlow’s, too, and you cannot wash it out.  Katy had a right to take her own child where she pleased, and you are not a man if you censure her for it, as I see in your eyes you mean to do.  Suppose it had stayed in New London and been struck with lightning—­you would have been to blame, of course, according to your own view of things.”

There was too much truth in Bell’s remarks for Wilford to retort, even had he been disposed, and he contented himself with a haughty toss of his head as she left the room to get herself in readiness for the journey she insisted upon taking.  Wilford was glad she was going, as her presence at Silverton would relieve him of the awkward embarrassment he always felt when there; and magnanimously forgiving her for the plainness of her speech, he was the most attentive of brothers until Silverton was reached and he found Dr. Grant waiting for him.  Something in his face, as he came forward to meet them, startled both Wilford and Bell, the latter of whom asked quickly: 

“Is the baby better?”

“Baby is dead,” was the brief reply, and Wilford staggered back against the doorpost, where he leaned a moment for support in that first great shock for which he was not prepared.

“Dead,” he repeated, “our baby dead,” and Morris was glad that he said our, as it indicated a thought of Katy as a mutual sharer in the loss.

Upon the doorstep Bell sat down, crying quietly, for she had loved the little child, and she listened anxiously while Morris repeated the particulars of its illness and then spoke of Katy’s reproaching herself so bitterly for having brought it from New London.  “She seems entirely crushed,” he continued, when they were driving toward the farmhouse.  “For a few hours I trembled for her reason, while the fear that you might reproach her added much to the poignancy of her grief.”

Morris said this very calmly, as if it were not what he had all the while intended saying, and his eye turned toward Wilford, whose lips were compressed with the emotion he was evidently trying to control.  It was Bell who spoke first.  Bell who said impulsively; “Poor Katy, I knew she would feel so, but it is unnecessary, for none but a savage would reproach her now, even if she were in fault.”

Morris blessed Bell Cameron in his heart, knowing how much influence her words would have upon her brother, who brushed away the first tear he had shed, and tried to say that “of course she was not to blame.”