If she saw the dark flush in his face at this, she did not notice it, but went on hastily.

“Stephen never had a chance, and you know it, John.  He was too weak to break the trammels at home, as you did,—­let himself be forced to preach what his soul knew was a lie.  When you tried to open the door for him to a broader life”—­

“I shut him in a penitentiary-cell,” with a bitter laugh.  “They taught him to make shoes.”

“Was it your fault?  Now that he is free, then,” going on steadily, still patting the child’s cheek, “you mean to shake him off,—­having used him.  Push him back into the old slough.  He can make a decent living there, cobbling, I know.  Be generous, John,” with a keen glance of the pale brown eyes.  “If you succeed in this thing to-morrow, take him with us out of the United States.  There is trouble coming here.  Give him a chance for education,—­to know something of the world he lives in,—­to catch one or two free breaths before he dies.  He has been the man in the iron cage, since his birth, it seems to me.”

She got up as she spoke, rang the bell, and gave the baby to its nurse, wrapping it up in a blanket or two.  When she turned, her husband was standing on the hearth-rug, a half-laugh in his eyes.

“Judith!”

“What is it?”

“The plain meaning of all this is, that there is no one who can do this foul job to-morrow but Stephen Yarrow, and for my sake it must be done; ergo—­Well, well!  You do love me, child!”

Her eyes filled with sudden tears; she caught hold of his arm, and clung to it.

“I do love you, God knows!  What is Stephen Yarrow to me, soul or body?  Don’t be harsh with me, John!”

“Harsh?  No, Judith,” stroking the colorless curls gently; looking back; thinking that she had done much for him; he would humor her whim, not behave like a beast to her.  But his brother—­It would be better for Stephen in the end.  Certainly.  Yet he sighed:  a womanish, unable sigh.

A year or two afterwards, (for I am not writing of a fictitious character,) this man’s frauds were discovered.  They were larger and more uniformly successful than any that had ever been perpetrated in the States, but there was about them a subtle, dogged daring that did not belong to Yarrow’s character, and shrewd people who had known them began to talk of this shadow of a woman who went about with him,—­a quadroon, they said,—­and hinted strongly that it was she who had been the vital power of the partnership, and Yarrow but the well-chosen tool.  There are no means of knowing the truth of the conjecture, for Yarrow escaped:  she followed him, but is dead, so their secret is safe.  Fraud, however, was but one half of his story.  Soule gave like a prince,—­secretly, with a woman-like, anxious helpfulness, a passionate eagerness, as if the pain or want of a human being were insufferable to him.  In this he was alone:  the woman