And she wept, because of the anguish of her thirty years. Then she burst out: "I _hate_ Stephen. I don't care what you say--if he comes into this house I'll walk out of it. Oh, how I hate him!" Her loose mouth dropped, still quivering with its speech. Her face was one flame with her hair. But Kate was cool and collected. "Don't excite yourself. If it's only to influence Fred Tanqueray, he won't come," said Kate. Then the red-haired woman turned on her, mad with the torture of her frustrate passion. "He _will_ come! He _will_ come, I tell you. I've felt him coming. I've felt it in my bones. I've dreamt about it night after night. I've been afraid to meet the postman lest he should bring another letter. I've been afraid to go along the station road lest I should meet _him_. I'm afraid now to look out of that window lest I should see him standing there with his face against the pane." She crossed to the window and drew down the blind. For a moment her shadow was flung across it, monstrously agitated, the huge hands working. The man outside saw nothing more, but he heard his mother's voice and he took hope again. "For shame, Minnie, for shame, to speak of poor Steevy so. One would think you might have a little more affection for your only brother." "Look here, Mother" (Minnie again!), "that's all sentimental humbug. Can you look me in the face and honestly say you'd be glad to see your only son?" (The son's heart yearned, straining for the answer. It came quavering.) "My dear, I shall not see him. I'm a poor, weak old woman, and I know that the Lord will not send me any burden that I cannot bear." He crept from his hiding-place out into the silent lane. He had drawn his breath tight, but his chest still shook with the sob he had strangled. "My God!" he muttered, "I'll take off the burden." Then his sob broke out again, and it sounded more like a laugh than a sob. "The dollars--they shall have them. Every blessed one of the damned five million!" He looked at his watch by the light of the gas-lamp in the lane. He had just time to catch the last train down; time, too, to stop the carrier's cart with the gifts that would have told the tale of his returning. So, with a quick step, he went back by the way he had come, out of the place where the dead had buried their dead--until the Day of Judgment. THE GIFT I