when the family will be in the library holding prayers; and when I go to milk, I will bring you the paper.  Only to look at, to read over, mind you!  It doesn’t leave my hands, until the old General’s gold jingles in my pocket.  Then he is welcome to it, and Minnie may suffer the consequences; and you and I will divide the profits.  I want to go away and rest with my sister Penelope the remainder of my life, and though the family here beg me to stay, I have already given notice that I intend to stop work next month.”

“Very well, don’t fail me; I am as anxious to close up the job as you possibly can be.  I should like to see the child, Minnie’s child; but I might spoil everything if she looks like her mother.  Good-bye till to-morrow.”

The two walked away, one passing down the avenue of elms out into the street.  The other sauntered in the direction of the parsonage, but ere she reached the small gate, Hannah turned aside to a low iron railing that enclosed two monuments; a marble angel with expanded wings standing above a child’s grave, and a broken column wreathed with sculptured ivy, placed on a mound covered with grass.  Just behind the former and close to the railing, rose a noble Lombardy poplar that towered even above the elms, and at its base a mass of periwinkle and ground ivy ran hither and thither in luxuriant confusion, clasping a few ambitious tendrils even about the ancient trunk.

Over the railing leaned Hannah, peering down for several moments, at the lush green creepers, then she walked on to the parsonage gate, and disappeared.

Watching her movements, Regina readily surmised that somewhere near that tree the paper was secreted; and she was painfully puzzled to unravel the thread that evidently linked her with the mystery.

“I am the child she spoke of, and she has tried again and again to ‘pump’ me, as she called it.  ‘Minnie’ must mean my mother; but that is not her name.  Odilie Orphia Orme never could be twisted into ‘Minnie;’ and that coarse, common, low, wicked man never could have dared to love my own dear beautiful proud mother!  There must be some dreadful mistake.  Somebody is wrong; but not mother,—­no, no—­never my mother!  Once she wrote that she was forced to keep some things secret, because she had bitter enemies; and this man must be one of them, for he said he would hunt her down.  But he shall not!  Was it Providence that brought them here to talk over their wicked schemes where I could hear them?  Oh if I only knew all!  Mother—­mother! you might trust your child!  I can’t believe that I am ignorant even of my mother’s name.  Surely she never was that red-faced man’s ’Minnie’!”

Covering her face with her hands, she shuddered at the familiar mention by profane lips of one so hallowed in her estimation, and this vague threatening of danger to her mother sufficed for a time to divert her thoughts from the sorrow that for some days past had engrossed her mind.