"Are you making a fortune by it?" went on the coroner. Abel shook his head. "I have a small income of my own, sir, and it is enough for my simple wants. What little money I make by my medicines, and honey, and that--it is not much--I find uses for in other ways. I indulge in a new book now and then; and there are many poor people around who need a bit of help sometimes." "You 'read' the stars, I am told, Abel Crew. What do you read in them?" "The same that I read, sir, in all other of nature's works: God's wonderful hand. His wisdom, His power, His providence." Perhaps the coroner thought to bring Abel to ridicule in his replies: if so, it was a mistake, for he seemed to be getting the worst of it himself. At any rate, he quitted the subject abruptly, brushed his energy up, and began talking to the jury. The drift of the conversation was, so far as the room could hear it, that Crew's pills, and only Crew's, could have been the authors of the mischief to the two deceased children, whose bodies they were sitting upon, and that Crew must be committed to take his trial for manslaughter. "Hester Reed's evidence," he continued, "is so clear and positive, that it quite puts aside any suspicion of the box of pills having been changed----" "The box had not my mark upon it, sir," respectfully spoke Abel Crew, his tone anxious. "Don't interrupt me," rebuked the coroner, sharply. "As to the box not having what he calls his private mark upon it," he added to the jury, "that in my opinion tells little. Because a man has put a mark on fifty pill-boxes, he is not obliged to have put it on the fifty-first. An unintentional omission is readily made. It appears to me----" "Am I in time? Is it all over? Is Abel Crew found guilty?" This unceremonious interruption to the official speech came from a woman's voice. The door of the room was thrown open with a fling, considerably discomposing those who had their backs against it and were taken unawares, and they were pushed right and left by the struggles of some one to get to the front. The coroner looked daggers; old Jones lifted his staff; but the intruder forced her way forward with resolute equanimity. Cathy Reed: we never remembered to call her Parrifer. Cathy in her Sunday-going gown and a pink bonnet. "How dare you?" cried the coroner. "What do you mean by this? Who are you?" "I have come rushing over from Tewkesbury to clear Abel Crew," returned Cathy, recovering her breath after the fight. "The pills that killed the children were my pills." The commotion this avowal caused in the room was beyond describing. The coroner stared, the jury all turned to look at the speaker, the crowd trod upon one another. "And sorry to my heart I am that it should have been so," went on Cathy. "I loved those two dear little ones as if they were my own, and I'd rather my pills had killed myself. Just look at that, please, Mr. Coroner."