"No!" I emphatically interrupted him. "That, never! She is not going from my house—certainly not to him!" I was the more abashed by my own vehemence when I saw Dibdin staring at me with lifted eyebrows. "Why—you are not—" he began blankly—but I interrupted him hotly. "I am nothing!—She is to me just as Jimmie and Laura and Randolph are, but they are unfortunately his. Don’t you know the meaning of responsibility for young lives, Dibdin? I want to give her her chance, educate her, make a fine woman of her. They have a father; she has no one but me. I can’t turn her out—and I wish," I added lamely, "I had as much right to keep them all." "Whew!" he whistled in renewed astonishment. "I can only say I don’t know you any more. I used to know you, but I’m proud to make the acquaintance of the new Mr. Randolph Byrd." "Don’t be a damn fool, Dibdin," I mumbled in exasperation. "You know you are talking rot. Why the devil are you so interested in the kids? There is that cheque you sent—!" "You haven’t cashed it," he interposed, moving his shoulders as one shaking off something. "Why the deuce haven’t you?" "I will some day," I grinned at him feebly, "when I need it more. But you haven’t answered my question." I felt I was goading him brutally but for once I seemed to have the dear old tramp upon the hip. For all his gruffness he was as full of emotions as anybody. It seemed to me absurd for a man to hide his implanted instinct, one of the noblest of all the little hidden root-cellars of our instincts, under a false shame or indifference. Women are wiser—they don’t hide theirs; and I had become shameless about mine. "Why," I repeated, "are you so much interested in those kids?" "Don’t be an ass!" he grunted, looking down upon the wet tablecloth, and a spasm as of pain crossed his countenance. "Ah, you see!" I laughed, attempting to lighten his mood. "Randolph," he uttered in a strange solemn tone that sent a slight thrill through me. "I told you once there was a woman I had cared about—and only one." "Yes—but you never married her." "No," he continued in the etiolated tone of a dead grief. "She was married already when I knew her." And then my sympathy went out to grizzled old Dibdin. "I am sorry," I murmured, touching his hand across the table. "Did I know her?" "Yes," he said quietly, "you knew her. It was Laura." In a flash of poignantly bitter and vain regret I saw the vista of the dead years—of what might have been! ... *CHAPTER XVI* Miracles—miracles are common as blackberries! Pendleton is once again a faithful worker in the vineyard of the insurance company. A commonplace miracle enough, but all miracles, I suppose, are commonplaces that happen to surprise us or that we don’t understand.