LITMIR.BIZ

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the support of the table, on which he rested his hand.

      Ray advanced still further, and, bending his tall thin figure, asked in a muffled voice, "Who are you, my little man? and what have you got in your hand?" The child held something white in a hand which he extended to Ray.

      The child did not answer, but crossed the threshold into the full light of the lamp, still offering the white object, which now could be seen to be a letter.

      "What is your name, my little man?" repeated Ray, with a look of something like awe on his face.

      "Don't!" whispered Bramwell, backing until he reached his chair. "Don't! Can't you see his name?"

      "No. I am not able to make out what is on the paper at the distance. Give me the paper, my little lad."

      Bramwell knew what the name of the child was, and Ray had a tumultuous and superstitious feeling that the coming of this child across the water in the night to the lonely islet and this solitary man had some portentous significance.

      Ray took the letter from the child, and read the superscription with dull sight. Then he said, turning to Bramwell, "This does not explain how you know his name. There is nothing on this but,

'Francis Bramwell, Esq.Boland's Ait,South London Canal.'

      What is your name? Tell me your name, my little man."

      "Frank," said the child in a frightened voice.

      "Yes. What else?"

      "Mellor."

      "What!" shouted Ray, catching up the boy from the floor and holding the little face close to the lamp.

      "Did not you see his name on his face? Look! Is it not her face? Philip, I am suffocating!"

      Ray gazed at the child long and eagerly. Bramwell, swaying to and fro by his chair, kept his eyes on the rosy face of the boy. The boy blinked at the light, and looked from one man to the other with wide-open, unconcerned eyes. At length Ray put the little fellow on the floor. The boy went to the table and began looking at the papers spread upon it. From his self possessed, unabashed manner, it was plain he was well accustomed to strangers.

      "Who brought you here?" asked Ray again. The other man seemed bereft of voice and motion, save the long swaying motion, which he mechanically tried to steady by laying hold of the arm of the chair.

      "A man," answered the child, running his chubby young fingers through some papers.

      "Where did you come from?"

      "Mother," answered the child.

      "Who is mother?"

      The boy looked round in smiling surprise.

      "Mother is mother," and he laughed at the notion of grown-up people not knowing so simple a thing as that his mother was mother. He was thoroughly at his ease-quite a person of the world.

      "You had better open the letter," said Ray, holding it out to Bramwell. "I did not recognise the writing. It is not like what I remember, and it is in pencil."

      Bramwell took the letter. His face worked convulsively as he examined it. "I should not recognise the writing either, and yet it could be no other than hers, once you think of her and look at it." He turned the unopened envelope round and round in his hand. "What is the good of opening this, Philip? It will make no difference in me. I shall never look at her of my own free-will again."

      "How can you judge the good of opening it unless you know what it contains? You cannot send it back by this messenger. My little lad," he said, turning to the child, who was still moving his dimpled fingers through the confused mass of papers on the table, "where is the man that brought you here?"

      "Gone away," answered the child, without suspending his occupation.

      "He left you at the door and knocked and went away?"

      The boy nodded.

      "He brought you across the water and set you down and knocked, and went back across the water?"

      "Went back across the water," repeated the boy.

      "What did he do then?"

      "Ran off."

      "You see, Frank," said Ray to the other man, "you cannot send back the letter by the messenger who brought it."

      "Shall I throw it into the canal? I made up my mind never to know anything about her again in this life," said Bramwell.

      Ray put his hand on the child's head and said, "Where did you leave your mother?"

      "At home."

      "Where?"

      "A long way."

      "Do you know where?"

      "Yes; in bed."

      Bramwell tore open the envelope, read the letter, handed it to Ray, and flung himself into his chair. The note, written in pencil like the address on the cover, ran:

"May 28.

      "Frank, – I have found out where you are after long search. I ask nothing for myself-not even forgiveness. But our child, your little son, will be alone and penniless when I die, which the doctor tells me must be before morning. I have enough money to pay all expenses. It is not his money, but money made by myself-by my singing. You may remember my voice was good. I shall be dead before morning, the doctor tells me. There will be money enough for my funeral, but none for my child. He is very young-I forget exactly how old, for my head is burning hot, and my brain on fire. He is called after you, for you used to be kind to me when I was at Beechley before I was married to Frank Mellor. You remember him? This is a question you can never answer, because I hear in my ears that I shall die before morning. The money for my funeral is in my box. I am writing this bit by bit, for my head is on fire, and now and then I cannot even see the paper, but only a pool of flame, with little Frank-my baby Frank-on the brim, just falling in, and I cannot save him. I am writing my will. This is my will. I think I have nothing more to say. I wish I could remember all I have said, but I am not able; and I cannot read, for when I try, the paper fills with fire. It is easier to write than to read… I am better now. My head is cooler. It may not be cool again between this and morning, and then it will be cold for ever. [I have money enough for myself when I am dead.] Take my boy, take our child. Take my only little one-all that is left to me. I do not ask you to forgive me. Curse me in my grave, but take the child. You are a good man, and fear and love God. My child is growing dim before my dying eyes. I could not leave him behind when I fled your house. I cannot leave him behind now, and yet I must go without him. I know you are bound in law to provide for him. That is not what I mean. Take him to your heart as you took me once. I love him ten thousand times more than I ever loved myself, or ever loved you. I can give you nothing more, for I am not fit to bless you. The pool of flame again! But I have said all.

"Kate."

      Ray had read the letter standing by the table, and with his back to the chair into which Bramwell had sunk. When he finished he turned slowly round and fixed his gaze on the child. A feeling of delicacy and profound sympathy made him avoid the eyes of the other man. The dying woman was his sister, but she was this man's wife. A little while ago he had said that death would well befit her; and yet now, when, as in answer to his words, he read her own account of the death sentence passed upon her, he felt a pang of pity for her and remorse for his words. For a moment his mind went back to their orphaned childhood, and his love and admiration of his sister Kate's beauty. He had to banish the pictures ruthlessly from his mind, or he would have broken down. Silence any longer preserved would only afford a gateway to such thoughts; so he said, as he placed his hand once more on the head of the boy:

      "She was delirious, or half-delirious, when she wrote this."

      "Philip, she was dying."

      "Yes. What do you propose to do?"

      "Nothing. The boy said he came a long way, and that whoever brought him ran away. It is plain she has taken precautions to conceal her hiding-place. Let things be as they are. They are best so."

      He spoke like a man in a dream. He was half stunned. It seemed to him that all this had passed in some dreary long ago, and that he was only faintly

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