Mammy Cely's story made a deep impression on Margaret in her excited state of mind. She could not sleep for thinking of it. If the whole gamut of human experiences had been run, nothing would have appealed to her like this. The iniquity of the thing struck her with a force that was almost staggering. She had come of generations of slave-owners who had never known anything else than to accept conditions as they found them and do for their dependent ones the best they could. That such heart-breaking tragedies as this had ever taken place among them had never occurred to her. Personally, of course, she had seen nothing of slavery, but she had spent her life in the midst of the negroes of Washington, who seemed so irresponsible, so given to carousings, so prone to appear in the police courts, that she had never thought of them as possessing the deeper feelings of human nature. They seemed a people apart. The sad little story to which she had listened revealed the truth. God had made all women's hearts alike, and then had designated the color of their skins—then had placed them in stations high or low—then had made them bond or free. And when He made them mothers He touched them all with a coal from the same altar.

But it was not alone the pathos of the story, deep and tragic as that was, that kept her night after night with wide-open eyes staring into the darkness.

A formless terror was creeping over her. As she thought of the author of the black woman's miseries and his relationship to her child, it seemed almost as if Philip were in the path of some onrushing tide of evil propensities—inheritable vices that might sweep him away from her into an abyss from which she could never rescue him. Of course the wolf blood of the De Jarnettes was a thing to smile at. That was negro superstition. But the sinister fact remained that the man who had sold Mammy Cely's child was the father of the one who was trying to get her child. If the father had been thus cruel what could be expected of the son he had reared, and to whom he had given his blood with the curse upon it? There seemed something awful to her in the thought of that curse. Where had it come from? From generations of dumb suffering mothers who could do nothing but call down maledictions? Was there really such a thing as invoking a curse that could be visited from father to son? She sat up in bed to get her breath. It did seem as if she would suffocate in this darkness.

She got up and felt for the matches, reaching frantically for them, her hands shaking, her teeth chattering. As the gas flared up she felt the relief that comes from the chasing away of shadows, and smiled a little at her own folly.

She turned the gas low ... what was that noise? It sounded like someone at the front door. Judge Kirtley had said they would never try to take Philip by force, but—that certainly was somebody on the stairs. She listened with every nerve tense. Not a sound but the stentorious breathing of Mammy Cely in the room beyond. She had slept there ever since the baby came.... Margaret fell back on the pillow with relaxed nerves.... If only the throbbing in her head would stop! She tossed from side to side with a great physical longing for the sleep that would not come.

The weeks that followed were hard ones for Margaret. She was worn to a shadow by her anxieties and the law's delay. At the proper time Judge Kirtley had gone before the Court and given notice that Mrs. De Jarnette would contest the will on the ground that the testator was of unsound mind.

It is not the purpose of this narrative to give the proceedings of that trial before the Probate Court. It is only the result that concerns us. It may be said in passing, however, that in no particular did Mr. De Jarnette deviate from the policy he had adopted at the first of simply falling back upon the law and the right of the testator to make such a will. "Bull dog tactics," Judge Kirtley called them to a brother lawyer. Not a word as to the unfitness of the mother to rear the child, not a breath affecting her character. The burden of proof was with the contestants,—and the contestants unfortunately were short of proof. Judge Kirtley himself did not believe Victor De Jarnette to have been of unsound mind.

Mr. Jarvis testified with great reluctance that while Victor De Jarnette was, at the time when the codicil was added, in a state of considerable excitement and strong feeling, he saw nothing about him which would lead him (Mr. Jarvis) to consider him of unsound mind. The testimony of the two witnesses to the will was to the same effect.

Men who had had business dealings with him a day, a week, a month previously were called to the witness-stand and with one voice upheld his sanity. More than one of them cast a pitying glance at the girlish, black-robed figure back of Judge Kirtley, and gave this testimony only because he was under oath.

Servants from his own household were examined as to whether they had observed anything suspicious in their employer's manner or actions,—anything that would incline them to the belief that he was of unsound mind. Not one circumstance pointing toward it was developed.

To all this counsel for the contestant could only offer the testimony of Mrs. De Jarnette as to his state of passion on that evening; the unexplained mystery of his disappearance just before the birth of his child; his sensational return unannounced; and his tragic death. This he said had been attributed to accident, but it had been by no means proved that it was not by intention. If it were a case of suicide this would be contributory proof, at least, that he was not himself six or eight months after the time of the making of the will. The case of his mother was referred to briefly, Judge Kirtley giving it as his belief that no woman who deserted her child was ever in her right mind at the time of doing it.

As Judge Kirtley spoke of the possibility of her husband's death being by his own hand, Margaret involuntarily raised her eyes to the face of Mr. De Jarnette. She was startled to find his black eyes furtively watching her. As on that day in her own library, a hot flush swept into her face and then out again, leaving it whiter than before.

Judge Kirtley in his endeavors to keep up Margaret's courage had dwelt so strongly upon the improbability of the child's being awarded to Mr. De Jarnette that he had at last inspired her with a belief that the right would win. As the case proceeded she found her confidence waning, but she was totally unprepared for the decision.

The Court sustained the will. There was overwhelming proof that the testator was of sound mind at the time of executing the will; there was no evidence introduced looking toward undue influence, and no charge made that the testamentary guardian was an improper person to have the guardianship of the child. The law, while an ancient one, was explicit as to the right of a husband in the District of Columbia to make such a disposition of his child. It had been argued that it was a cruel and unjust law, but it might be said in reply to this that the surest way to the repeal of a bad law was to have it rigidly enforced. Therefore, etc.

"Does he get him?" The agonized whisper broke the stillness that fell upon the court-room as the decision was announced.

They took her home more dead than alive.

"It isn't a foregone conclusion that he will get him yet, my child," Judge Kirtley told her as he helped her into the house. "This is but the beginning. You are not going to give up at the very outset, are you? Keep up your courage, Margaret! You think you don't care to have Mrs. Kirtley with you to-night? Well, I'll send the doctor in to give you something for your nerves. You are all unstrung. There! there! Here, Auntie," as Mammy Cely appeared, "take her and put her to bed. This has been hard on her."

When the old woman followed him to the door he said, "No. It went against her. I am afraid I buoyed her up a little too much. This is the reaction. Look after her."

In her darkened room Margaret lay on the couch and tried to think it out. But her head buzzed so and she was so frightfully confused! After a while maybe she could, but not now—not now!

When she went to bed she fell into fitful sleep. Her dreams were worse than her waking fears. She put out her hand every now and then to touch Philip and be sure he was actually there.

As she tossed thus on a sleepless bed, now burning with fever, now shaking as with an ague, Mammy Cely's words suddenly recurred to her with startling distinctness. "If I had been a white woman I would have taken that child and gone." ... Well?... She was a white woman.... She lay very still then. But where could she go?... In all the world where could she go?

A curious thing is the human brain. It has its crannies and cubby-holes where it lays away its stores as a housewife piles up unused linen. Then these treasures are covered up by other and later accumulations and we straightway forget that they exist, until some day Memory without ado deftly extricates from underneath the load a name, a fact, a story, and holds it up before us; or, opening but a crack, she bids us listen at the door, and we hear perhaps as Margaret was hearing now, a forgotten voice, saying:

"—an obscure spot, my dear. You can hardly find it on the map. But if you ever need a friend, come to me."

Her trembling ceased. Her heart was almost brought to a stop by the sudden force of a hope that flung itself across her way.

For steadying the nerves of an essentially strong person suffering temporary collapse, there is nothing like an emergency requiring action. It is the helplessness of enforced inactivity that saps courage and bears us down. As Margaret lay there holding with a death-grip to her new-found hope, she felt herself thrilled as by an electric current. Strength and courage came flowing back to the heart that a moment before had been at ebb-tide. She thought rapidly. Then she got up and looked at the clock. It was not quite twelve. She had thought it was nearly morning.

Mammy Cely was in her usual deep sleep, but Margaret took the precaution to close her door. With swift noiseless steps she dressed herself, and taking a handbag filled it with baby garments. She stuffed a pocket book well down into the bag, having first taken from it a roll of bills and secreted them about her person. A superstitious thrill passed through her at sight of the money. It was much more than she was in the habit of drawing and it had been taken from the bank only yesterday. The teller had said to her as he handed it to her, "Mrs. De Jarnette, that is a large sum to have in the house. I should not let the amount be known to the servants—or to anybody." What had prompted her to draw so much money? Surely it was God's leading. He meant her to escape!

She went next to a drawer and took out her jewels, mostly gifts from her father, with a few simple things that were her mother's. There was a diamond brooch and earrings and necklace that had been Victor's mother's. She had forgotten them in her guilty flight, and they had come to Margaret. She put them back into the drawer and with them some gifts of Victor's that she could not bring herself just then to take, marking the box plainly, "The De Jarnette diamonds," and locking them up.

This done, she sat down with the clock before her and wrote two notes—one, a very brief one, to Richard De Jarnette. It said:

"I leave you the De Jarnette diamonds. I would willingly give up the De Jarnette money if you will relinquish your claim to Philip. But I shall never let you have my child."

It was in different vein that she wrote to Judge Kirtley. He must forgive her for going—she couldn't help it. She simply had to go. The appeal might fail as this had. The world was so large. She was sure that she could find some place in it where she could hide away and be at peace. She had not told him because she thought it might be better for a while for him not to know. Then, too, she had felt sure that he would try to dissuade her—and she must go. He would forgive her, she knew. He had been a father to her—

Here the page was blurred and the letter ended abruptly.

Sealing and directing both she placed them on the mantel in plain sight.

The car line runs past Dupont Circle and the house on Massachusetts Avenue was not far off. She would be in time for the "owl car," which would take her to the B. and O. station. She would not risk calling a carriage.

When she finished the letters Margaret took up her bag and went softly down the great stairway. A dim light was burning in the hall, and by it she made her way to the door, unlocking it and drawing back the heavy bolts. There was no sign of tremor in her hand, no fear in her face,—only a fierce eagerness to be gone. Putting the bag on the outside, and leaving the door ajar that there might be no delay, she crept noiselessly up the stairs again.

The old woman on the other side of the door slept heavily, recking little of the train of consequences her story had started. She might not have withheld it had she known. The striking of the clock admonished Margaret that she had no time to lose. She caught up the baby, bonneted and cloaked against the cold, hushed it with soft whisperings, and stole down the stairs. She did not stop to look around—perhaps she did not dare—she had come to the house a bride; she was leaving it a fugitive. The door creaked as it swung back on its massive hinges. The sound startled her. Outside the street was silent and empty. The city was sleeping its beauty sleep. She closed the door softly, pressed her baby close to her breast, and slipped out into the darkness.