("I knew it was the right side," thought Peter, swiftly. "That would have been the side in shadow, when the cabman saw Anne Blake standing before her sister's dressing table. I told O'Malley it must be the right side." He was thinking this even while he listened attentively.) "That's why I took her in profile," Lord was saying--"so it wouldn't show, you see. The child was painfully sensitive about it and so was her mother, though of course not to the same extent. I wanted them both to be pleased, and I knew Anne Blakeslie must hate to be reminded of--of----Oh, Mr. Clancy, such a horrible experience.... I hate, even now, to think of it." Peter did not say, "Don't think of it, then." He wanted to hear, to learn every detail. He did not want to miss even a remote chance. So he looked eagerly, inquiringly, into the old man's face, but said nothing. "It was awful, terrible," Walter Lord went on as Peter knew he must now that he was fully started. "It wasn't so very long before Anne and Rosamond were born. She was--she had gone into the woods to pick blackberries or something I think.... There was a sort of clearing behind some big rocks not so very far from the house.... And there--I learned it all much later--she came upon a vicious, half-witted tramp, who was harbouring up on the mountain. He was squatting on the ground, dressing a chicken he'd stolen, and she didn't see him until she was right beside him.... He looked at her--and leaped up. She was a woman, beautiful--alone, and, as he thought, far from help. He bent over, and crept toward her, with his hands all bloody.... She screamed--and--and he caught her by the throat----" The old man lifted his clenched hands and pressed them, quivering, against his forehead. Peter sat in horrified silence. "If she hadn't screamed"--Walter Lord went on, after a moment--"if she hadn't been able to fight, and keep on screaming--God"----Again he paused, but after a long, shuddering breath, continued--"Curwood was inside the house, but he heard her. He had almost a sixth sense of direction, and all his senses were preternaturally acute, but he was blind! Think of it! To be blind, and to hear someone--someone you loved--calling--calling for help! "He got there--just in time. The fiend heard him coming and made off through the woods.... Anne was ill, terribly ill, and for a long time it seemed as if she could not live. It was a fearful time for--for everyone who cared for her. "A few days before her little twin babies were born, the body of the--of the wretch was found at the bottom of a cliff. There were black marks of fingers on his throat--but he was known to be a worthless scoundrel--and the coroner's jury brought in a verdict of accidental death." There was a long silence, broken only by the call of an owl away off in the woods--"Who-o-o--Who----" After a time Walter Lord went on, in a slightly altered tone: