“‘Poor lass, I was too hard on her. She isna to blame. But I canna go to meet her mother till our little lass has forgie’n me for the name I called her. Thomas, help me up. Since she winna come to me I must e’en go to her.’ “There was no crossing him--we saw that. He got up from his deathbed and Thomas helped him out into the hall and up the stair. I walked behind with the candle. Oh, Master, I’ll never forget it--the awful shadows and the storm wind wailing outside, and father’s gasping breath. But we got him to Margaret’s room and he stood before her, trembling, with his white hairs falling about his sunken face. And he prayed Margaret to forgive him--to forgive him and speak just one word to him before he went to meet her mother. Master”--Janet’s voice rose almost to a shriek--“she would not--she would not! And yet she WANTED to speak--afterwards she confessed to me that she wanted to speak. But her stubbornness wouldn’t let her. It was like some evil power that had gripped hold of her and wouldn’t let go. Father might as well have pleaded with a graven image. Oh, it was hard and dreadful! She saw her father die and she never spoke the word he prayed for to him. THAT was her sin, Master,--and for that sin the curse fell on her unborn child. When father understood that she would not speak he closed his eyes and was like to have fallen if Thomas had not caught him. “‘Oh, lass, you’re a hard woman,’ was all he said. And they were his last words. Thomas and I carried him back to his room, but the breath was gone from him before we ever got him there. “Well, Master, Kilmeny was born a month afterwards, and when Margaret felt her baby at her breast the evil thing that had held her soul in its bondage lost its power. She spoke and wept and was herself again. Oh, how she wept! She implored us to forgive her and we did freely and fully. But the one against whom she had sinned most grievously was gone, and no word of forgiveness could come to her from the grave. My poor sister never knew peace of conscience again, Master. But she was gentle and kind and humble until--until she began to fear that Kilmeny was never going to speak. We thought then that she would go out of her mind. Indeed, Master, she never was quite right again. “But that is the story and it’s a thankful woman I am that the telling of it is done. Kilmeny can’t speak because her mother wouldn’t.” Eric had listened with a gray horror on his face to the gruesome tale. The black tragedy of it appalled him--the tragedy of that merciless law, the most cruel and mysterious thing in God’s universe, which ordains that the sin of the guilty shall be visited on the innocent. Fight against it as he would, the miserable conviction stole into his heart that Kilmeny’s case was indeed beyond the reach of any human skill.