"Oh, yes--yes. I found him in. He was sitting at his desk--" She stopped abruptly. Margaret was leaning forward, one hand clutching the rail of the iron bed, the other clenched in her lap. "Go on," she said hoarsely. The sick woman looked at her and a swift change passed over her face, a look almost of veiled cunning coming into it. "He would do nothing for me," she resumed in a commonplace voice. "I never saw him again--he died soon afterwards, I heard." The subject seemed finished. "Just one thing more," Margaret's lips were dry. She hardly knew her own voice. "Did--did he die a natural death or by violence?" For just a moment the woman hesitated. It was as if she were weighing her words. Then she said quietly, "He died a natural death." Margaret drew a long, long breath. "Tell me something about your little boy," she said almost lightly. A tenderness came into the woman's wan face at mention of him. "I named him Louis--Louis Lesseur. That was my mother's name, and Louis is for my little brother that died. I could not give him even my own name--my father was so bitter--but these two were dead." "And is he very dear to you--your little son?" "Dear? O, madam, he is the very breath of life to me." "And yet you cannot have him with you?" "No." She said it very patiently. "The rules of both Hospital and Home forbid. But sometimes they bring him to me for a little while." As the sad story to which she had listened had progressed, a determination had been taking form in Margaret De Jarnette's mind. She bent over now and speaking slowly that the sick woman might take in her words, said, "And would it make you very happy if you could have him all the time? If you could lie upon a couch in some pleasant, sunny room--a quiet house, we'll say, where you would not be disturbed--could have your little Louis in this room with you every day--to talk to you and lean against you as he talks--to have his playthings on the floor and play that you and he were this and that--perhaps sometimes when you were very well even to have his crib bed in your room, and tuck him in, and watch him go to sleep--could have his goodnight kiss and hear him say his prayers--" she drew the picture with the swift, sure strokes that mothers know--"if you could have all this and know that it would last until some night you'd fall asleep to waken on your mother's breast,--would it make you very happy?" The woman looked at her with parted lips and shining eyes. "Oh, madam!--It would be heaven!" "Then enter into paradise," Margaret said softly. "You mean--" the sick girl asked, incredulously. "I mean that I am going to take you to my home if you will go, and let you have your little Louis with you there." The woman caught her hand and kissed it passionately. Then with quick alarm she asked, "But madam--the lady? Would she be willing for him to come to me?" Margaret smiled. "She will be willing." Another fear assailed the mother.