They found me an hour after, lying along the floor, clasping the dead infant in my arms.  I was in a swoon, and they all think I fell with the child, as perhaps I did, and that its little life went out during my insensibility.  Of its features, like and yet unlike our boy’s, no one seems to take heed.  The nurse who cared for it is gone, and who else would know that little face but me?  They are very good to me, and are full of self-reproaches for leaving me so long in my part of the building alone.  But though they watch me now, I have contrived to write this letter, which you will get with the one telling of the baby’s death and my own dangerous condition.  Destroy it, Philemon, and then come.  Nothing in all the world will give me comfort but your hand laid under my head and your true eyes looking into mine.  Ah, we must love each other now, and live humbly!  All our woe has come from my early girlish delight in gay and elegant things.  From this day on I eschew all vanities and find in your affection alone the solace which Heaven will not deny to our bewildered hearts.  Perhaps in this way the blessing that has been denied us will be visited on our child, who will live.  I am now sure, to be the delight of our hearts and the pride of our eyes, even though we are denied the bliss of his presence and affection.

Mrs. Sutherland was not seen to enter or go out of my rooms.  Being on her way to the depot, she kept on her way, and must be now in her own home.  Her secret is safe, but ours—­oh, you will help me to preserve it!  Help me not to betray—­tell them I have lost five babies before this one—­delirious—­there may be an inquest—­she must not be mentioned—­let all the blame fall on me if there is blame—­I fell—­there is a bruise on the baby’s forehead—­and—­and--I am growing incoherent—­I will try and direct this and then love—­love—­O God!

[A scrawl for the name.]

Under it these words: 

Though bidden to destroy this, I have never dared to do so.  Some day it may be of inestimable value to us or our boy.  Philemon Webb.

This was the last letter found in the first packet.  As it was laid down, sobs were heard all over the room, and Frederick, who for some time now had been sitting with his head in his hands, ventured to look up and say:  “Do you wonder that I endeavoured to keep this secret, bought at such a price and sealed by the death of her I thought my mother and of her who really was?  Gentlemen, Mr. Sutherland loved his wife and honoured her memory.  To tell him, as I shall have to within the hour, that the child she placed in his arms twenty-five years ago was an alien, and that all his love, his care, his disappointment, and his sufferings had been lavished on the son of a neighbour, required greater courage than to face doubt on the faces of my fellow-townsmen, or anything, in short, but absolute arraignment on the charge of murder.  Hence my silence, hence my indecision,