With a wrench he swung back the doors and flung himself into the light.

“Come in, men!  Isaac, Green—­all of ye—­and you over there!  I got something to say, and I don’t want ye to miss a word of it!  You, too, Mr. Feilding, and that lady next ye—­and everybody else that kin hear!

“That’s my son, Barton Holt, lyin’ there dead!  The one I druv out o’ here nigh twenty year ago.  It warn’t for playin’ cards, but on account of a woman; and there she stands—­Lucy Cobden!  That dead boy beside him is their child—­my own grandson, Archie!  Out of respect to the best woman that ever lived, Miss Jane Cobden, I’ve kep’ still.  If anybody ain’t satisfied all they got to do is to look over these letters.  That’s all!”

Lucy, with a wild, despairing look at Max, had sunk to the floor and lay cowering beneath the lifeboat, her face hidden in the folds of her cloak.

Jane had shrunk back behind one of the big folding doors and stood concealed from the gaze of the astonished crowd, many of whom were pressing into the entrance.  Her head was on the doctor’s shoulder, her fingers had tight hold of his sleeve.  Doctor John’s arms were about her frail figure, his lips close to her cheek.

“Don’t, dear—­don’t,” he said softly.  “You have nothing to reproach yourself with.  Your life has been one long sacrifice.”

“Oh, but Archie, John!  Think of my boy being gone!  Oh, I loved him so, John!”

“You made a man of him, Jane.  All he was he owed to you.”  He was holding her to him—­comforting her as a father would a child.

“And my poor Lucy,” Jane moaned on, “and the awful, awful disgrace!” Her face was still hidden in his shoulder, her frame shaking with the agony of her grief, the words coming slowly, as if wrung one by one out of her breaking heart.

“You did your duty, dear—­all of it.”  His lips were close to her ear.  No one else heard.

“And you knew it all these years, John—­and you did not tell me.”

“It was your secret, dear; not mine.”

“Yes, I know—­but I have been so blind—­so foolish.  I have hurt you so often, and you have been so true through it all.  O John, please—­please forgive me!  My heart has been so sore at times—­I have suffered so!”

Then, with a quick lifting of her head, as if the thought alarmed her, she asked in sudden haste: 

“And you love me, John, just the same?  Say you love me, John!”

He gathered her closer, and his lips touched her cheek: 

“I never remember, my darling, when I did not love you.  Have you ever doubted me?”

“No, John, no!  Never, never!  Kiss me again, my beloved.  You are all I have in the world!”

The end