"Coats said that Edward had passed instantly. He realized then some of the complications that were certain to follow, and that he went directly home, and that Sue drove him into the city, where he had his wound dressed. "Coats said that he had had no intention of shirking his responsibility, that he had simply waited for events to shape themselves, and that what followed made any action on his part unnecessary, but that he had determined to come to me with his confession as soon as he felt that your future was assured. He told me to proceed against him if I thought fit, that he would face any charge I made. I thought I had paid my last debt to Westmore, but I was mistaken; I told Coats to take his secret back with him and keep it. "And I have kept it until to-day. Now I turn it over to you, together with my confession: for the sake of my family's good name, I did the thing that saved you from disgrace; I saved one brother at, what seemed to me, a lesser expense to the other. "Take what I have told you and add it to your already full experience of lives inextricably tangled because of you. Wherever you have cast your net, you have brought in a heavy haul.... JUDITH." And from Ann's reply also a fragment: "... and what you have told me is not new to me. Coats told me long ago, while I still lay ill. Coats told me, and dear old Ben told me all he knew--I made them tell me, for I knew that my father had never forsaken me--_of his own free will_. "And, Judith, I also know just why you have written all this to me. Throughout these years it has been a Westmore pitted against a nobody's child. But I feel no bitterness, only an immense interest, for out of it all has grown a wonderful thing.... ANN." THE END