They were all too much interested to smile even when he kept on addressing her as if she were still a child and his social equal, but looking at her as she murmured: “Yes, Dan,” they saw her glance quickly and blushingly at Doctor Ludington, then her lashes drooped again. Dan nodded and continued: “Pat and Lyd said what a fine joke ’twould be for some horrid, ugly old man to ’pear at the bedside, and they give me some money to go to old Doctor Binks’ offis arter ’leven o’clock an’ tell him to come right straight off to little Eva; she was a-chokin’ with a nawful bad cold. I went and told him all right, but he was drunk as a biled owl, and so he sent his assistant, Doc Ludington, in his place. And that’s how the hull trouble come about. I could swar to it on a thousand Bibles! Then, when thet trouble come in through Terry Groves’ makin’ a mistake and shootin’ too soon, his sisters was ’shamed to own their part in bringing the hull thing on. They kep’ mute as mice, and told me if I confessed what I had done at their biddin’ I would be hung ackcessary to the murder, and ’vised me to run away, which I done!” “The fellow is lying!” Patty muttered, turning pale as the dead. “Naw, he hain’t, nuther!” cried a loud, shrill voice, as Miss Tabby started up like a Jack-in-a-box from her seat, wagging her head, her frizette awry, her feathers flying, as she added: “He has told the gospel truth, has Dan Ellis, for Lydia told me all about it last year when she was so ill an’ feared she was a-goin’ to die. She said it laid heavy on her conscience, the way she’d helped to treat Eva, an’ if she died I was to tell the truth about it to everybuddy, but if she got well she’d be ’shamed to have it known! But I don’t feel as I had any call not to tell it now. I done parsecuted poor little Eva long enough, an’ to no good, for that ongrateful Patty has turned me off to go home an’ shift for myself, an’ I’m bound to git my revenge on her before I go!” She might have maundered on still further, but there came an unexpected, startling interruption. Reginald Hamilton, starting from his seat, his brilliant eyes dimmed with tears, knelt like a supplicant at Eva’s feet, crying: “My injured angel, how much you have endured from the malice of those fiendish women! It breaks my heart to think of it, and to recall the cruel part I took in it, without stopping for a moment to think that your angel face was a testimony to your angelic purity! Oh, my wronged, adored one, will you forgive me?” Patty sneered contemptuously, but no one noticed her; they were watching so eagerly for the reconciliation of the lovers. Very sweetly and kindly Eva looked at him, and answered: “I forgive you, Reggie!” “God bless you, dear. I do not deserve it, but my devotion shall atone for all. Will you try to love me again? May our wedding go on to-night?” “Get up Reggie. You must not kneel to me; we are only friends hereafter. I can never be your wife now!”