“Don’t taunt me now; don’t try to make my agony greater than it is. I could not bear another jot. And, Jack, let me tell you, that truly as I live, there’s nothing I would not do to save Annie’s life.” “Nothing?” Jack said, questioningly. His tone roused Georgie to such an unnatural state that she replied to him: “No, nothing; and here I swear that if Heaven will spare Annie’s life and give her back to me, I’ll tell Roy everything. Yes, everything. I mean it. Father in Heaven, hear me, hear the vow I make. Give me Annie’s life and I’ll tell everything. Try me and see.” She was praying now, while Annie, bewildered by what she had heard, looked first at her and then at Jack, saying imploringly: “Tell what, Georgie? What does it mean? It makes me so dizzy and faint. Is it about my mother, and why she don’t come when I am dying?” There was no response to this, and Annie pleaded again: “Where is she, Jack? Don’t she love me any? Oh if I could see her once and hear her voice, and put my head in her lap, and call her mother, I’d pray to Jesus to make her good and let her come to Heaven if she was ever so bad. Was she bad, Georgie? Was my mother naughty?” It was a strange spectacle, that white-faced, dying child, stretching her trembling hands toward that gayly-decked, but crushed, stricken woman, and demanding some knowledge of her mother, and Georgie shrunk back from the touch of the little hands, and wiped the sweat-drops from her own pallid face, and turned toward Jack as if for help in her distress. But Jack was powerless then; it was her hour of agony and she must meet it alone. Suddenly there broke over her countenance a light as of some newly-formed resolution, and with a gasp she said to her brother: “Go out, Jack, please, and leave us here alone. Keep them all away till I call to you to come. Annie is mine, now; mine; all mine.” She seemed more like a crazed creature, when, after Jack was gone, she bolted the door, and even looked out into the wintry night, as if fearing listeners there. But she grew calm again, and her voice, though low and sad, was tolerably steady in its tone as she sat down by Annie and said: “Ask me anything you please, and I will answer you.” * * * * * Half an hour passed away, and the three waiting below heard the low murmur of voices,—one of surprise and eager inquiry, the other, mournful, heartbroken, and, as Jack knew, full of bitter shame. Then there was a sound of sobbing, with broken sentences of love, and then another silence, followed by a hasty call for Jack to come quickly.