A Sovereign Remedy

Botticelli angel than ever, for her face was mutinous, the very curls about he

mith's brief yearly absences on the work of the Socialistic Congre

aflame with righteous indignation. "Mr. Meredith, the rector, he know his part,

a sudden frown. "You don't m

don't know where they'll lie, much less where they'll go to when they're dead. But I do hear it said that there'll be a fuss, becos the Calvinists wouldn't baptize the babby, hoping to get hold o' the name o' the father, for it was a sin and a shame, her not bein', as it wer

y to the great bunch of gold-

aby," she said quietly, "the

awn and disappear behind the rhododendrons. A glimmer of it showed like a bit of heaven among the birchwood beyond

ura" (the h was always added on such occasions as a point o

never one at all; and sorry be, for 'twud be a right sight to see 'u

t, no, nor me neither, as you know to your cost, or shud do by this time. No! Miss H'Aura, bless her dear heart, has such a outlook as no man can ever reach to it truly; an' when one is a-lookin' d

some of which seemed to get into his sunburnt ears. "When she be so high as a star, an

r so hard. But head or heart, you mark my word, when Miss H'Aura's time comes, him as cares least, an' lays least finger

for that trick o' blushin'; but there, beet is beet, and what's in the ha

r fifteen years he had made ineffectual attempts to court Martha, and nothin

or his pertinacity. As she went back to her kitchen she also chuckled. "Blushed like a babby," she murmured,

ly Welsh sheep, alarmed even at her gracious presence, fleeing from the tussocks and rock

owers as if they had been the body of the dead baby. Poor little babe! to come into this world unsought, to leave it to be quarrelled over. The motherhood which was hers by right of her sex wakened in her strongly; she laid her soft cheek caressingly once more on a white petal, then, i

t the shepherd's cottage; the toddling baby with its fists full of i

child was de

eart. Such a pretty baby, too, as it had been! More than once she had paused in passing to watch it and wish that she too had so delightful a playthi

w it w

ong the hills. A desolate-looking little cottage, gardenless, fenceless, a mere human habitation set down beside

igure of a man. It was, indeed, the Reverend Morris Pugh coming away from consolation. He paused at the sight of her, as any man

y will surely comfort the poor mother, and teach her to trust in the mercy of Him who consider

d at him a

n. I brought them for th

od to the child. God has taken him. Vengeance is mine, saith th

wn a little pale,--"that the chi

Lord loveth whom He chast

have told

reply on the instant: "She did not n

ew it a

ttage eager with her purely human consolation; but the n

the bedroom was half open, and through it, lying on a table covered with a white sheet, was a tiny, still, uncovered form in a white gown.

n? What

ost apologetically to stout Mrs. Evans; "I

her apron over her face, sat Gwen rocking herself to and fro, and muttering under her breath. She drew down the apron at her mother's touch and quick sentence in Welsh, and so sat stari

d Aura, laying one of the l

her feet, snatched at the flower, tore it shred fr

wers here." Then she clung to her mother and wailed, "Oh! mother, take it away--take the child away--I do not want it; it is accursed. God has taken it away, and

g her to veritable stone. She understood enough to grasp the drift of what she heard, and with a quick pulse of pity for the quiet rest t

, was a mad iolin--just a silly nonsense--though it was just true the child wass better to die. It was not as the 'nother one--here she looked sorrowfully at a five-year-old who was busy making mud pies by the waterspout, an

world-expanse of hill and wood in its magic mantle, looked in the w

ointing to the child--"that your other d

more strenuously. "It is the price," she protested; "there is many aski

n gave n

the sunshine; she turned swiftly

ld be given a shillings or so when they be

e no money," she cried, her voice ringing with pas

ccursed! To count it unbaptized! The darling lying there so peaceful, so still, so waxen, so like the lilies. Ah! if she could only take it away from all the sordid thoughts, what burial would not her fingers compass there on the bo

orous pace, she passed on, passed upwards, pursued by the one overmastering impulse

e world, and knew still less of its ways. She thought of the lowing heifer and its bull-calf, of the second brood of young blackbirds over whose first flight she had but th

ther was right. M

s death was a punishment. Poor Gwen seated in her threadbare black, with her apron over her head, so unlike the

t of a hill. Here in winter the south-west winds howled and swept the bare braes, wasting their force against the lichen-set boulders behind which even the s

ing estuary and the sea beyond. Beyond that again the setting su

bout many things, reaching forward to the future vaguely with certain new thoughts regarding it in he

eep, purple-stained clouds. It was a pagean

to the end, she would see the anger and the threa

ll in her lap, until she was

we

It was a beautiful face, the sort of a face which women love, and in it

blue dress. He had thought she was Gwen; poor frail Gwen who was not "

would have been gone, but Aura's strong, firm fingers were o

hand she struck his handsome face ful

said. "Go! you

sh and blood, leaving no mark, but her w

he flung herself face down on the short turf, crushing the lil