my first baby fell sick,” she faltered; “I was just out of bed myself, and having no nearer neighbours then than now, I was all alone on the hillside, Alec being away at sea. I was too young to know much about sickness, but something told me that I must have help before morning or my baby would die. Though I could just walk across the floor, I threw a shawl around me, took my baby in my arms, and opened the door. A blinding gust of rain blew in. A terrible storm was raging and I had not noticed it, I was so taken up with the child.
“I could not face that gale. Indeed, I was so weak I fell on my knees as it struck me and became dripping wet before I could drag myself inside. The baby began to moan and everything was turning dark before me, when I heard a strong, sweet voice cry out in the roadway:
“‘Is there room in this house for me till the storm has blown by? I cannot see my way down the hillside.’
“With a bursting heart I looked up. A woman was standing in the doorway, with the look of an angel in her eyes. I did not know her, but her face was one to bring comfort to the saddest heart. Holding up my baby, I cried:
“‘My baby is dying; I tried to go for the doctor, but my knees bent under me. Help me, as you are a mother—I—- ‘
“I must have fallen again, for the next thing I remember I was lying by the hearth, looking up into her face, which was bending over me. She was white as the rag I had tied about my baby’s throat, and by the way her breast heaved she was either very much frightened or very sorry.
“‘I wish you had the help of anyone else,’ said she. ‘Babies perish in my arms and wither at my breast. I cannot touch it, much as I yearn to. But let me see its face; perhaps I can tell you what is the matter with it.’
“I showed her the baby’s face, and she bent over it, trembling very much, almost as much indeed as myself.
“‘It is very sick,’ she said, ‘but if you will use the remedies I advise, I think you can save it.’ And she told me what to do, and helped me all she could; but she did not lay a finger on the little darling, though from the way she watched it I saw that her heart was set on his getting better. And he did; in an hour he was sleeping peacefully, and the terrible weight was gone from my heart and from hers. When the storm stopped, and she could leave the house, she gave me a kiss; but the look she gave him meant more than kisses. God must have forgotten her goodness to me that night when He let her die so pitiable a death.”
At the minister’s house they were commenting upon the look of serenity observable in her dead face.
“I have known her for thirty years,” her pastor declared, “and never before have I seen her wear a look of real peace. It is wonderful, considering the circumstances. Do you think she was so weary of her life’s long struggle that she hailed any release from it, even that of violence?”
A young man, a lawyer, visiting them from New York, was the only one to answer.
“I never saw the woman you are talking about,” said he, “and know nothing of the circumstances of her death beyond what you have told me. But from the very incongruity between her expression and the violent nature of her death, I argue that there are depths to this crime which have not yet been sounded.”
“What depths? It is a simple case of murder followed by theft. To be sure we do not yet know the criminal, but money was his motive; that is clear enough.”
“Are you ready to wager that that is all there is to it?”
This was a startling proposition to the minister.
“You forget my cloth,” said he.
The young man smiled. “That is true. Pardon me. I was only anxious to show how strong my conviction was against any such easy explanation of a crime marked by such contradictory features.”
Two children on the Portchester road were exchanging boyish confidences.
“Do you know what I think about it?” asked one.
“Naw! How should I?”
“Wall, I think old Mrs. Webb got the likes of what she sent. Don’t you know she had six children once, and that she killed every one of them?”
“Killed’em—she?”
“Yes, I heard her tell granny once all about it. She said there was a blight on her house—I don’t know what that is; but I guess it’s something big and heavy—and that it fell on every one of her children, as fast as they came, and killed ‘em.”
“Then I’m glad I ben’t her child.”
Very different were the recollections interchanged between two middle-aged Portchester women.
“She was drinking tea at my house when her sister Sairey came running in with the news that the baby she had left at home wasn’t quite right. That was her first child, you know.”
“Yes, yes, for I was with her when that baby came,” broke in the other, “and such joy as she showed when they told her it was alive and well I never saw. I do not know why she didn’t expect it to be alive, but she didn’t, and her happiness was just wonderful to see.”
“Well, she didn’t enjoy it long. The poor little fellow died young. But I was telling you of the night when she first heard he was ailing. Philemon had been telling a good story, and we were all laughing, when Sairey came in. I can see Agatha now. She always had the most brilliant eyes in the county, but that day they were superbly dazzling. They changed, though, at the sight of Sairey’s face, and she jumped to meet her just as if she knew what Sairey was going to say before ever a word left her lips. ‘My baby!’ (I can hear her yet.) ‘Something is the matter with the baby!’ And though Sairey made haste to tell her that he was only ailing and not at all ill, she turned upon Philemon with a look none of us ever quite understood; he changed so completely under it, just as she had under Sairey’s; and to neither did the old happiness ever return, for the child died within a week, and when the next came it died also, and the next, till six small innocents lay buried in yonder old graveyard.”
“I know; and sad enough it was too, especially as she and Philemon were both fond of children. Well, well, the ways of Providence are past rinding out! And now she is gone and Philemon—-”
“Ah, he’ll follow her soon; he can’t live without Agatha.”
Nearer home, the old sexton was chattering about the six gravestones raised in Portchester churchyard to these six dead infants. He had been sent there to choose a spot in which to lay the mother, and was full of the shock it gave him to see that line of little stones, telling of a past with which the good people of Sutherlandtown found it hard to associate Philemon and Agatha Webb.
“I’m a digger of graves,” he mused, half to himself and half to his old wife watching him from the other side of the hearthstone. “I spend a good quarter of my time in the churchyard; but when I saw those six little mounds, and read the inscriptions over them, I couldn’t help feeling queer. Think of this! On the first tiny headstone I read these words:”
STEPHEN,
Son of Philemon and Agatha Webb,
Died, Aged Six Weeks.
God be merciful to me a sinner!
“Now what does that mean? Did you ever hear anyone say?”
“No,” was his old wife’s answer. “Perhaps she was one of those Calvinist folks who believe babies go to hell if they are not baptised.”
“But her children were all baptised. I’ve been told so; some of them before she was well out of her bed. ‘God be merciful to me a sinner!’ And the chick not six weeks old! Something queer about that, dame, if it did happen more than thirty years ago.”
“What did you see over the grave of the child who was killed in her arms by lightning?”
“This:
“‘And