To a little white bed in the hospital ward Margaret went. Upon it a young girl, beautiful even with death's seal upon her face, half lay, half sat, propped up with pillows, her eyes from the contrast with her white face seeming preternaturally bright. There was a feverish eagerness of speech battling with a shortness of breath as she received Margaret, which told its little tale of the flaring up of life's flame, but back of that was a natural vivacity and profuseness of gesture even in her weakness that hinted at Gallic blood. The ward was a lonely one. Over its portals a practiced eye could read, "All hope abandon, ye who enter here." Its inmates went out sometimes, but they never returned. A few beds away an old woman moaned monotonously. She was near enough to have heard their conversation, but the sands of life were running so low that hearing was dulled and curiosity blotted out. It was a safe place to talk if one had anything to say. Margaret's news that a home had been secured for little Louis was received with manifest relief. "And is it a good woman that has taken him?" the mother asked, clasping her hands, "Will she be good to him? Will she teach him to be good?" "I am sure she will try to do both," said Margaret. She felt a disinclination to tell the girl just yet that she herself was the one who was to take him. She would find out from her the story of her life first and then tell her. "But she is anxious to know something more about the child. Would--" she found it difficult to phrase her sentence--"would you be willing to tell this lady, through me, something of your life?" "My life?" faltered the girl, her eyes growing frightened. "Why--why does she want to know--about my life?" "Her friends think that she should know something of the little boy's--antecedents." It was Mrs. Pennybacker's word, not hers. "No, do not misunderstand me--" a slight flush had crept into the sick girl's face--"it is not idle curiosity, nor is it that she doubts you. This lady wishes to know enough to satisfy the child when, in after years, he begins to want to know something about his own history. There is--pardon me--I feel that I must ask--there is no blot of any kind upon his name?" Her own face crimsoned as she put the question, but it was one that Mrs. Pennybacker insisted must be asked, and indeed, as she talked to the sick girl now, she felt herself that she must ask it. A child taken from a Home so often had suspicion cast upon its parentage. The greatest kindness she could do him was to have a plain answer to a direct question--cruel though it seemed. The sick girl lay very still. When at last she spoke she looked into Margaret's face and answered, "There is no blot upon his name."