DURING supper that evening Mrs. Porter eyed her daughter furtively. Cynthia ate very little and seemed abstracted, paying no heed to her father's rambling, inconsequential remarks to her grandmother, who, in her white lace cap, sat across the table from him. Supper over, the family went out, leaving Cynthia to put the dishes away. Mrs. Radcliffe shambled quietly to her own room, and Porter took his pipe to his favorite chair on the porch. Being thus at liberty to carry out her own plans, Mrs. Porter stole unnoticed into Cynthia's room, and in the half-darkness looked about her. The room was in thorough order. The white bedspread was as smooth as a drift of snow, and the pillows had not a wrinkle or a crease. The old woman noiselessly opened the top drawer of the bureau; here everything was in its place. She looked in the next and the next with the same result. Then she stood erect in the centre of the room, an expression of perplexity on her face. Suddenly she seemed to have an inspiration, and she went to the girl's closet and opened the door. And there, under a soiled dress belonging to Cynthia, she found a travelling-bag closely packed.

With a soundless groan, Mrs. Porter dropped the dress, closed the closet-door, and moved back to the centre of the room.

“My God! my God!” she cried. “I can't stand it! She's fully made up her mind.”

Mrs. Porter left the room, and, passing her husband, whose placid face appeared intermittently in a red disk of light on the end of the porch, she went down the steps into the yard and thence around the house towards the orchard and grape-arbor. She paused among the trees, looking thoughtfully at the ground.

“If I'm going to do it,” she reflected, “I'd better throw out some hint in advance, to sort of lead up to it. I wonder if my mind is actually giving way? I am sure I've been through enough to—but somebody is coming.”

It was Cynthia, and she came daintily over the dewy grass.

“Mother, is that you?” she called out.

Mrs. Porter made no reply.

“Mother, is that—but why didn't you answer me?” Cynthia came up, a searching look of inquiry in her eyes.

Still Mrs. Porter showed not the slightest indication of being aware of her presence. Cynthia, in increasing surprise, laid her hand on her mother's arm, but Mrs. Porter shook it off impatiently.

“Look here, Nathan, if you don't quit following me up, dogging my steps, and bothering me with your—” Mrs. Porter broke off, looking blankly into Cynthia's face.

“Why, mother, what is the matter?” the girl exclaimed.

“Oh, you look like—you look like—” Mrs. Porter moved to a near-by apple-tree and leaned against its trunk, and with her head down she began to laugh softly, almost sillily. Cynthia drew near her again, and, catching the old woman by the shoulders, she turned her forcibly to her.

“Mother, what's the matter?” she demanded, her tone now quite full of alarm. .

“Oh, Cynthia, nothing is the matter with me! I'm all right, but, but, but—good gracious! just this minute you were—we were all at the table. Your pa was in his place, mother was in hers, and, how in the world”—Mrs. Porter was looking around in seeming astonishment—“how in the world did I get out here? I don't remember leaving the house. The last thing I recall was—”

“Mother, what's the matter?”

Mrs. Porter stared in a bewildered way at her daughter for a moment, then she put her hand to her brow with a weary gesture. “Something must be wrong with me,” she declared. “I didn't want to mention it, but this evening as I was coming back from town I got rather warm, and all at once I heard a little sound and felt something give way in my head. Oh, Cynthia, I'm afraid—I'm afraid I'm going like your aunt Martha did. They say hers was a drop of blood on the brain. Do you suppose it could be that, daughter?”

“Oh, mother, come on in the house and lie down. Go to bed, and you will feel better in the morning.” Cynthia caught her arm, and, greatly perturbed, slowly led the old woman towards the house.

“It's worry, daughter,” Mrs. Porter said, confidingly—“worry about you. You seem to be bothered on account of Nelson Floyd's being away, and I've allowed that to prey on my thoughts.”

“Never mind him, mother,” Cynthia said. “Come on in and lie down. You don't feel any pain, do you?”

“No, daughter, not a bit—not a bit; but your aunt didn't, either. She didn't suffer.”

“Don't you think we ought to send for the doctor, mother?”

“Doctor? No—how ridiculous! Even if it is a drop on the brain, he couldn't do me a bit of good. The brain is inside the—the—what do you call it? See there, my mind isn't what it was. I can't think of as common a thing as a—you know what I mean, Cynthia.”

“You mean skull, mother,” the girl said, anxiously.

“Yes, I mean that. Your aunt's memory was bad, too. She suddenly forgot her own name, and came in from the strawberry-patch one day scared out of her senses. The next thing was her hand getting numb. My thumb feels queer; I believe you could stick a needle through it and I wouldn't feel it. But don't you tell your pa, Cynthia. Wait, anyway, till to-morrow, and see how I feel then. It may pass away, and then—then, again, it may be the first stroke. They say people about my age usually have three, and the last one ends it. I hope I'll go naturally—the way Martha went was horrible; and yet when I think of all my trouble I—”

“Hush, mother, don't!” Cynthia cried. They had now reached the porch. Porter had retired, and so they passed on unnoticed to Mrs. Porter's room.

Cynthia helped her mother undress and get into the bed, and then she went to her own room and sat down, irresolutely, at her table. She leaned her head on her crossed arms and remained quite still. She was very tired in brain and body, and presently dropped to sleep. She slept for about two hours. Suddenly she waked with a start. The clock in the sitting-room was striking ten. Nelson would be at the grape-arbor soon, she told herself with a shudder. Perhaps he was already there, and too cautious to whistle as on former meetings. She stood up, tiptoed to the closet, and opened the door. She uncovered the hidden valise and lifted it out into the light. Then a recollection of her mother's strange condition struck her like a blow in the face, and, standing in the centre of the room, she sighed.

Just then she heard the tread of bare feet in the hall, and a low-mumbled monologue. Her heart stood still, for she recognized her mother's voice. Going softly to the door, she peered out, and there, in a thin, white dress, stood Mrs. Porter, Nathan's double-barrelled shot-gun clutched in her hand, her long hair hanging loose on her back. The old woman's face was averted, and she seemed unaware of her daughter's presence.

“Lord, my God, pardon me for this last act,” she was praying. “It may be a sin in Thy sight for a tortured person to seek escape from trouble by this course, but I can't stand it any longer.”

“Mother, what is this?” Cynthia darted out into the hall and snatched the gun from her mother's hands.

For an instant Mrs. Porter stood staring at her daughter, and then, as if to escape her glance, she turned and went slowly into Cynthia's room.

“Sh!” she said; “don't wake your pa.” And, seeing Cynthia's lamp burning low, she blew down the chimney and put it out. The room was now dark save for the moonlight that struggled in at the windows on each side of the drawn shades.

“Mother, you've got to tell me,” Cynthia demanded, as she leaned the cumbersome weapon against the wall and groped towards the still, white figure; “what were you going to do with that gun?”

Mrs. Porter said nothing, but moved backward to Cynthia's bed and, with a groan, sat down on it.

“Mother”—Cynthia leaned over her, a horrible fear gripping her heart-cords—“what were you about to do?”

“I don't know as I am obliged to tell you or anybody,” Mrs. Porter said, doggedly.

“Mother”—Cynthia sat down by the old woman and put her arm about the gaunt figure—“what were you going to do?”

“I was going to get out of my trouble, if you will know,” Mrs. Porter said, looking her daughter defiantly in the face.

“Your trouble, mother?”

“Yes, I've borne it as long as I can. Huh! you can't guess how much I know. I was awake last Friday night and overheard your plan to run off with Nelson Floyd. I was in a yard of you, crouched down behind the rose-bushes. You said you'd decide by to-night, and ever since then I've been tortured like a condemned soul. That's what affected my brain to-day. It wasn't the sun. Since that awful hour I have been praying God to spare you—to have mercy on my misguided child, and I hoped He would do it, but to-night, while you were putting the dishes away, I came in here and saw your packed valise, and knew you had concluded to leave. Then—then I decided to—to go like Sister Martha did. I was going out in the meadow, by the creek, where it was quiet. I couldn't bear the thought of having to face all those curious people who will throng the house to-morrow to find out about your disgrace.”

“You say you were there?” Cynthia gasped—“you heard?”

“Every word,” answered Mrs. Porter; “and every one was a rusty nail in my heart.”

There was silence. Cynthia had no defence to offer. She simply sat with bowed head, her arm lying limp upon her mother's thinly clad shoulders.'

“Yes, you made up your mind to stain forever our family record. No other girl that I ever heard of, even among our far-off kin, ever threw away her honor as you—”

“Stop, mother, you are going too far!” Cynthia cried, removing her arm and standing erect before the old woman.

“Cynthia, my poor, poor baby! in all that man said the other night he didn't once mention marriage.

“But he meant it, mother!” broke from the girl's pallid lips—“he meant it!”

“He didn't mean anything of the kind, you little fool! As plain as plain could be, he said, right out, that he had no name to give you. And any fool knows no marriage can be legal unless it is brought about under the lawful names of the contracting parties. He simply was trying to give you to understand that he wanted you as a companion in his sin and misery. He has lost his right to a foothold in society, and he wants you, of your own accord and free will, to renounce yours. It was a crazy idea, and one that could have come from none but a brain disordered by liquor, but that is what he had in view.”

“I don't believe it,” Cynthia said, firmly.

“It doesn't make any difference what you believe,” Mrs. Porter returned. “I'm older than you, and I see through him. He tried and tried to ruin you as he did Minnie Wade, but when he was reduced to despair by his trouble he rose from his debauch and wanted to turn his very misfortune to your undoing. The idiot was trying to make himself believe, because his parents had brought all that nastiness down on him, that he would be justified in a like course. The disgrace he had inherited he intended to hand down to another generation, and you—you poor, simple thing!—you calmly packed your white, unspotted things and were ready to sell yourself to his hellish purpose.”

There was awful silence. Cynthia stared, unable to utter a word. She may have doubted the fairness of her mother's version, but the grim picture painted there in the darkness by a woman in seeming readiness to take her own life on account of it fairly chilled her young life's blood. Suddenly a sound broke the outside stillness. There was no mistaking it. It rang out as shrilly on the girl's quaking consciousness as the shriek of a locomotive dashing through a mountain gorge.

“There he is now,” said Mrs. Porter. “Pick up your valise and hurry, hurry to him; but before you go hand me that gun. Before you and he get in that buggy you'll hear my death-knell, and you may know, too, that you fired the shot into the withered breast that nursed you. Go! I'm not keeping you!”

Cynthia swayed visibly in the darkness, and then she sank to her knees and put her head in her mother's lap.

“I won't go,” she groaned, softly. “Mother, I'll do anything you say—anything!”

“Now you are joking, I know,” Mrs. Porter said, harshly.

“No, I mean it—God knows I mean it, mother! Only give me a chance to prove that I mean it. I'll never see him again, if that will suit you—never on earth! I'll stay and nurse you and make you well.”

“If I thought you meant that, Cynthia—Lord, Lord, what a load it would take off of me! Don't—don't say that unless you mean it; the—the joy of saving you would almost kill me.”

“Oh, mother, God knows I mean it!”

“Then”—Mrs. Porter seemed to squeeze her words from her frail body as she stiffly rose to her feet—“then you must let me go, myself, out there and send him off.”

Cynthia, still on her knees, glanced up, her startled eyes wide open.

“Would you ask that, mother?”

“Yes, for in my present condition I'm afraid I'd never believe it was absolutely settled. I—I'm not as clear-headed as I used to be. I've got deep-rooted suspicions, and I'm afraid they would prey on my mind.”

“Then go, mother—go send him away. I'd rather never see him again on earth than to cause you to—to contemplate—but go, mother!”

“Well, you stay here then.” Mrs. Porter was moving towards the door. “I'll be easy with him. I'm so happy over this release that I feel grateful even to him. I'll be gentle, Cynthia.”

As she stood in the door-way of the chamber and glanced back, Mrs. Porter saw Cynthia throw herself face downward on the bed. The old woman was in the hall making her way towards the front-door when she heard Cynthia call her. Retracing her steps, she found her daughter sitting up.

“Mother,” the girl said, “let me go with you. You can hear all that passes between us. That ought to be satisfactory.”

“No, that won't suit me,” Mrs. Porter said, firmly. “I've set my heart on your never facing that man again. For you to go, it would look like you are crazy after him, and he'd hang around here no telling how long.”

“Then go on, mother.” Cynthia fell back on the bed, and, covering her face with her hands, lay still.