The Shield of Silence. Harriet T. Comstock

stood within the room. Her eyes took in the scene, the pretty face against Sister Angela's bosom; the sunlight lying full across the bed and picking out into a gleam the golden cross that hung to the floor.

      "I'm too—late!"

      Agony rang in the quiet words.

      "And I've travelled day and night! Her letter was forwarded to me."

      The letter burned against Doris's bosom like a tangible thing. She crossed the room and sank beside the bed.

      They all slipped through the following days as people do who realize that troubles do not come to them, but are overtaken on the way. They seemed always to have been there; some people pass on the other side, but if one's path lies close, then one must go with what courage possible—look hard, feel and groan with the understanding, and pass on as best he can bearing the memory with him.

      Father Noble came from many miles back in the hills. Riding his sturdy little horse, his loose black cloak floating like benignant wings bearing him on; his radiant old face shining even in the face of death.

      He stayed until the wound in the hillside was covered over Meredith's little form; stayed to see the flowers hide the scar, murmuring again and again: "In the hope of joyful resurrection." His was the task to bridge life and death, and there was no doubt in his beautiful soul.

      "And now," he said, after four days, "I must go to Cleaver's Clearing"—the Clearing was twenty hard miles away. "There are children there who never heard of God until I took some toys to them last Christmas. Then they thought that I was God. They are sick now, poor children—bad food; no care—ah! well, they will learn, they will learn."

      And the old man rode away.

      And still Doris had not seen Meredith's child.

      "I cannot, Sister," she had pleaded. "I can think of it only as George Thornton's child."

      The hate in Doris's heart was so new and appalling a sensation that it frightened her.

      She tried to think of the unseen child with the love that she felt for all children—but that one! She struggled to overcome the sickening aversion that grew, instead of lessened, while the days dragged on. But always the helpless child represented nothing but passion, brutality, suffering, and disgrace. It was not a child, a piteous, pleading child—it was the essence of Wrong made visible.

      Sister Angela was deeply concerned. The unnatural attitude called forth her old manner of authority. Sitting alone with Doris before the fire in the living room the evening of Meredith's funeral and Father Noble's departure she grew stern and commanding.

      "This will never do, my dear," she said. "It cannot be that life has made of you a cruel, unjust woman."

      Doris dropped her eyes—they were wonderful eyes, her real and only claim to beauty. Dusky eyes they were, with a light in them of amber.

      "How much did Merry tell you?" she asked, faintly, for the older woman looked so frail and pure that it seemed impossible that she knew the worst.

      "My dear, she told me—nothing. Her letter said that she wanted to tell me things—things that she could not tell to God"—Angela unconsciously touched her cross—"but there was no time. No time."

      "There are things that women cannot tell to God, Sister. Things that they can only tell to some women!"

      A bitterness that she could not control shook Doris's voice. She shrank from touching the exquisite detachment of Sister Angela by the truth, and yet she must have as much sympathy as possible and, certainly, coöperation.

      "Sister, this child should never have been born!"

      The words reached where former words had failed. A flush touched Angela's white face—it was like sunrise on snow. Then, after a pause:

      "Did—Meredith—think that?" A growing sternness gave Doris hope that she might be saved the details that were like poison in her blood.

      "Yes. Protected by—by what is law—George Thornton——"

      But Angela raised her thin, transparent hand commandingly. It was as if she were staying the torrents of wrong and shame that threatened to deluge all that she had gained by her life of renunciation and repression—and yet in her clear eyes there gleamed the understanding of the depths.

      "May God have mercy upon—the child!" was what she said, and by those words she took her stand between past wrong and hope of future justice. "You must take this child, Doris," she said. "All that you know and feel but make the course imperative and inevitable."

      "Sister, how can I—feeling as I do?"

      "Can you afford not to? Can you leave it—to such a man?"

      "But, Sister, you do not know him. If I should conquer my aversion and take the child, if I succeeded in loving it—he would bide his time and claim it. The law that made this horrible thing possible covers his claim to the child."

      Angela drooped back in her chair. She looked old and beaten.

      "He must not have the child," she murmured. "It's the only chance for the salvation of Meredith's little girl. He shall not have it!"

      Doris bent toward the fire holding her cold, clasped hands to the heat. Suddenly she turned.

      "I am growing nervous," she said, "I thought I heard someone pressing against the window—I thought I saw—a shadow drift outside in the moonlight."

      Angela started and sat upright. Every sense was alert—she was remembering her promise to old Becky!

      "I wish," she said, haltingly, "I wish I had consulted Father Noble. I have undertaken too much."

      "Consulted him about what, Sister?" Doris was touched by the quivering voice and strained eyes; she set her own trouble aside.

      Again that pressing sound, and the wind swirling the dead leaves against the house.

      "About a little deserted mountain child upstairs. I have promised to find a home for it, but I cannot manage such things any more—I am too old."

      The words came plaintively, as if defending against implied neglect.

      Doris's eyes grew deep and concerned.

      "A deserted child?" she repeated. In the feverish haste and trouble of the past few days the ordinary life of Ridge House had held no part. It seemed to be claiming its rights now, pushing her aside.

      Then Sister Angela, her tired face set toward the long window whence came that pressing sound and the swish of the wind, told Becky's story. She told it as she might if Becky were listening, ready at any lapse to correct her, but she carefully refrained from mentioning names.

      It eased her mind to turn from Doris's trouble to poor Becky's, and she saw with relief that Doris was listening; was interested.

      "It is strange," Sister Angela mused, when the bare telling of the story was over, "how the deep, cruel things in life are met by people in much the same way—the ignorant and the wise, when they touch the inscrutable they let go and turn to a higher power than their own. Meredith felt that her child's chance in life lay in a new and fresh start. The mountain woman's curse, as she termed it, could only be conquered, so she pleaded, by giving her grandchild to those who did not know. It amounts to the same thing.

      "Meredith is—gone; the old woman of the hills cannot last long. I wonder, as to the children—I wonder!"

      Doris's eyes were burning and her voice shook when she spoke. Her words and tone startled Angela.

      "Where is the—the mountain child?" she asked.

      "Upstairs, my dear. Why, Doris, you are shaking as if you had a chill. You are ill—let me call Sister Constance."

      But Doris stayed her as she rose.

      "No, no, Sister. I am only trembling because my feet are set on a possible way! I am—I