With a very grave look on her emaciated face, Jane Hemingway, without wrap for her thin shoulders or covering for her gray head, strode across the yard and into the bushes. Almost holding her breath in dire suspense and with a superstitious fear of she knew not what, she sped through the wood, briers and thorn-bushes clutching at her skirt and wild grape-vines striking her abreast and detaining her. Presently she was near enough to the spring to hear voices, but was, as yet, unable to see who was speaking. Then she became fearful lest the dry twigs with which the ground was strewn, in breaking under her feet, would betray her presence, and she began, with the desperate caution of a convict escaping from prison, to select her way, carefully stepping from one patch of green moss to another. A few paces ahead of her there was a group of tall pines, and the earth beneath their skeleton boughs was a veritable bed of soft, brown needles. She soon gained this favorable point of progress, and sped onward as noiselessly as the gentle breeze overhead. Suddenly, through the bushes, she caught a gleam of color, and recognized the dark-blue skirt Ann Boyd wore so constantly, and—her heart stood still, for, massed against it, was the light gray of Virginia’s dress. Ah, there could be no shadow of a doubt now. Sam was right, and with bowed head and crouching form Jane gave bewildered ear to words which caused her blood to stand still in her veins. "Yes, I’ve thought a lots about it, child," she heard Ann saying. "I can’t make it out at all, but I really love you more than I do my own daughter. I reckon it was the divine intention for me and you to have this secret between us, and pity one another like we do. I can’t help it, but when you tell me you love me and think I’m good and the best friend you’ve got on earth, why, it is the sweetest sound that ever fell on human ear." There was a pause. Jane Hemingway held her breath; her very soul hung on the silence. Then, as if from the dun skies above the shaft descended, as if dropped from the lips of the Avenging Angel. It was the child of her own breast uttering sounds as inexplicable, as damning to her hopes, as if the gentle, tractable girl had approached her bed in the dead hours of night and said: "Mother, I’ve come to kill you. There is no way out of it. I must take your life. I am stronger than you. You must submit. Ann Boyd has willed it so. Mother, I am Retribution!" "Yes, I do love you, with all my heart," were the words Jane heard. "I can’t help it. You have been kinder to me, more considerate of my feelings, than my own mother. But I will make amends for all her cruelty towards you. I’ll love you always. I’ll go to my grave loving you. You are the best woman that ever lived. Suffering has raised you to the skies. I have never kissed you. Let me now—_do, do_ let me!"