“’Is there room in this house for me till the storm has blown by?  I cannot see my way down the hillside.’

“With a bursting heart I looked up.  A woman was standing in the doorway, with the look of an angel in her eyes.  I did not know her, but her face was one to bring comfort to the saddest heart.  Holding up my baby, I cried: 

“’My baby is dying; I tried to go for the doctor, but my knees bent under me.  Help me, as you are a mother—­I—–­’

“I must have fallen again, for the next thing I remember I was lying by the hearth, looking up into her face, which was bending over me.  She was white as the rag I had tied about my baby’s throat, and by the way her breast heaved she was either very much frightened or very sorry.

“‘I wish you had the help of anyone else,’ said she.  ’Babies perish in my arms and wither at my breast.  I cannot touch it, much as I yearn to.  But let me see its face; perhaps I can tell you what is the matter with it.’

“I showed her the baby’s face, and she bent over it, trembling very much, almost as much indeed as myself.

“‘It is very sick,’ she said, ’but if you will use the remedies I advise, I think you can save it.’  And she told me what to do, and helped me all she could; but she did not lay a finger on the little darling, though from the way she watched it I saw that her heart was set on his getting better.  And he did; in an hour he was sleeping peacefully, and the terrible weight was gone from my heart and from hers.  When the storm stopped, and she could leave the house, she gave me a kiss; but the look she gave him meant more than kisses.  God must have forgotten her goodness to me that night when He let her die so pitiable a death.”

At the minister’s house they were commenting upon the look of serenity observable in her dead face.

“I have known her for thirty years,” her pastor declared, “and never before have I seen her wear a look of real peace.  It is wonderful, considering the circumstances.  Do you think she was so weary of her life’s long struggle that she hailed any release from it, even that of violence?”

A young man, a lawyer, visiting them from New York, was the only one to answer.

“I never saw the woman you are talking about,” said he, “and know nothing of the circumstances of her death beyond what you have told me.  But from the very incongruity between her expression and the violent nature of her death, I argue that there are depths to this crime which have not yet been sounded.”

“What depths?  It is a simple case of murder followed by theft.  To be sure we do not yet know the criminal, but money was his motive; that is clear enough.”

“Are you ready to wager that that is all there is to it?”

This was a startling proposition to the minister.

“You forget my cloth,” said he.

The young man smiled.  “That is true.  Pardon me.  I was only anxious to show how strong my conviction was against any such easy explanation of a crime marked by such contradictory features.”