Like one carved from rock, Jed held his position while a reverent expression grew upon his face.

The glow showed yellow through the western sky, The Gap was growing purplish and dim, and just then, across a foot bridge over the river, a hurrying, bent form appeared.  It swayed perilously—­Jed heard a muttered curse.

“Gawd A’mighty,” he breathed, “it’s ole Aunt Becky come back to add to trubble after us-all hopin’ she was daid—­or something.”

Becky was coming toward the road, bending over the bundle she bore; she paused, looked down, and then darted ahead right in the path of the horses.  They reared and something snapped.

Meredith awoke and sat up with a cry.

“What is the matter?” she asked.  “An accident?”

“‘Tain’t nothin’ so bad as an accident, ma’am,” Jed reassured her, “but I don’t take no chances with Lincoln’s hind hoofs, ma’am, an’ somethin’ done cracked in dat quarter.”

The pause gave Aunt Becky time to reach Ridge House and play her part in the scheme of things.

Panting and well nigh exhausted, the old woman staggered on and was thankful to see at her journey’s end that but one light shone in the quiet house.  The light was in the living room where Angela sat alone waiting for Meredith Thornton.  She had quite forgotten, in her growingly anxious hours, all about poor Becky and her sorrows.  So now, when the long window, opening on the west porch, swayed inward, she started up with outstretched arms—­and confronted Becky.

“I’ve brung hit!” Becky staggered to a chair, uninvited, and sat down with her burden, wrapped in a dirty, old quilt, upon her knees.

Angela sat down also—­she was speechless and frightened.  She watched the old woman unfold the coverings, and she saw the form of a sleeping new-born baby exposed to the heat and light of the fire.  She tried to say something, to get control of herself, but she only succeeded in bending nearer the apparition.

“Zalie she cum las’ night like I told you she would.  She’s daid now—­Zalie is.  I don buried her at sun-up—­an’ I want it tole—­if it ever is tole—­that the child was buried long o’ Zalie.  She done planned while she was a-dying.

“I told her what you-all promised an’ she went real content-like after that.”

There was sodden despair in Becky’s voice.

“Who—­is the father of this child?”

The commonplace question, under the strain, sounded trivial—­but it was rung from Angela’s dismay.

Becky gave a rough laugh.

“Not the agony o’ death an’ the fear o’ hell could wring that out of Zalie,” she said.  Then:  “Yo’ ain’t goin’ back on yo’ promise, are yo’?”

Sister Angela rallied.  At any moment the wheels on the road might end her time for considering poor Becky.

“You mean,” she whispered, “that you renounce—­this child; give it to me, now?  You mean—­that I must find a home for it?”