On all the great holidays he made a point of going down--Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New-Year's Day. Mrs. Chester had wished to duplicate for the quarryman's boy the Christmas gifts of her own child (such had been her pretty fancy), but Batty was quite a lad--ten years old; and Bert, like a spoiled collie, was yet a baby, and likely to remain so for some time to come. So the mother contented herself, perforce, with less intimate remembrances. Once, when she had packed a box of miracles--toys and books, clothes and candy--she thrust it from her with a cry: "They would never touch these--if they knew! Hurlburt! Hurlburt! don't you think they ought to know?" "Do what you think best, Mary," he said, wearily. "I have never been able to decide that question. But you are free to do so if you prefer." He regarded her with an expression that went to her heart. She flung herself into his arms and tried to kiss it away. Now, Mary Chester, as we have said, was a worrier, and the worrier never lets a subject go. As the winter set in, her mind closed about the matter which had troubled her, and it began to become unbearable, like a foreign substance in the flesh. On a January afternoon--it was one of those dark days when souls cloud over--she flung on her furs, and leaving a pencilled line to her husband saying what she had done, she took the train to Gloucester, and a dreary electric-car to Annisquam. The flowers in the front yard were knee-deep in snow, and Batty sat in the window busy with a Sorrento wood-saw of her providing. He laughed outright when he saw her, and his mother flung open the door as if she had flung open her heart. [Illustration: THE FLOWERS IN THE FRONT YARD WERE KNEE-DEEP IN SNOW] "Land!" she cried. "In all this snow!" She finished tying a fresh white apron over her polka-dotted blue wrapper, and joyously led the lady in. Batty was a freckled little fellow, with red hair like his father's; he had the pretty imperiousness of a sick and only child who has by all the sorceries contrived to escape petulance. When he had greeted the visitor, he ran back to his jig-saw. He was carving camwood, which stained his fingers crimson. "I want to see you--alone," began Mrs. Chester, nervously. It had been one of Chester's pleasures to warm the entire house for the convalescent lad, and big coal fires were purring in Batty's bedroom and in the ten-foot "parlor," whither his mother conducted her guest. The doors were left open. The scent of the camwood came across, pungent and sickening. The fret of the jig-saw went on steadily. "He's makin' a paper-cutter--for Mr. Chester," observed Batty's mother. "He made a watch-case last week--for Mr. Chester." Mary Chester paled, and she plunged at once: "There's something I've come to tell--I've _got_ to tell you. We can't keep it to ourselves any longer. I have come to tell you how it happened--that Batty-- We thought you'd rather not know--"