“Poor darling! to be born without a father, when he would have been so proud of his boy. Poor, murdered Will! Poor, fatherless baby! I am glad God gave you to me. I did not deserve it. I’ve been so thoughtless and wicked, but I will be better now. Dear little baby, we will grow good together, so as to go some day where papa has gone.” She would not let them take the child from her. It was hers, she said. God had sent it to make her better, and she would have it. There was something in the touch of its soft, warm hands, which kept her heart from breaking. And so they left it with her, and from the day that little life came to be one in the household, Rose began to amend, and, in her love for her child, forgot in part the terrible pain in her heart. Once her mother said to her: “Will you call your baby, William?” And she replied. “No; there is but one Willie for me, and he is in Heaven. Baby will be called for brother Jimmie.” And so one bright Sunday morning in March, when St. Luke’s was decked with flowers from the Mather hot-house, and the children of the Sunday School sang their Easter carols, Rose Mather, in her widow’s weeds, went up the aisle, with her mother, Annie, and brother Tom, the latter of whom gave her bright-eyed, beautiful boy to the rector, who baptized him “James Carleton.” And all through the congregation there ran a thrill of pity for the widowed mother, whose face, though it had lost some of its brilliant color, was more beautiful than ever, for there was shining all over it the light of a new joy, the peace which comes from sins forgiven, and, after the baptism was over and the morning service read, Rose knelt with her mother, brother, and Annie, to receive, for the first time, the precious symbols of a Saviour’s dying love. Rose had ceased to oppose Annie in her wish to join Mrs. Simms, who was then at Annapolis; and when Tom, a few days after the baptism, went back again, Annie would go with him as a regular hospital nurse. It might be that Jimmie would be among the number of skeletons sent up to “God’s land,” as the poor fellows called it; and Annie’s heart throbbed with the pleasure it would be to minister to him, to call the life back to his heart, to awaken an interest in him for olden times, and then, perhaps, whisper to him that the decision made that moonlight night, more than a year and a half ago, had been revoked and where she had said no, her answer now was yes. Between herself and Mrs. Carleton there had been a long talk, of which Jimmie and the little Pequot girl were the subjects, and the proud lady had asked forgiveness for the wrong done to that girl, if wrong there were. “Something tells me you will find my boy,” she said; “and if you do, tell him how freely I give him this little Lulu, and God bless you both!”