The Price

maiden-and womanhood-commonly identified her for inquiring strangers as "good old Doctor Bertie's 'only

mpshire, migrating to the dry winters of Minnesota for his young wife's health. The migration had been too long postponed to save the mother's life; but it had made a beautiful

by river. Patient little Miss Gilman was the least querulous of sufferers, but she was always very ill on a railway train. Hence Charlotte, who was at once physician, n

New Orleans, Miss Gilman was so far from being travel-sick that she was able to sit with Charlotte in the shade of the hurr

the daring robbery of the Bayou State Security, garnished with startling head-lines. Charlotte read it, half-absently at first, and a second time with interest awakened and a quic

it, Charl

the newspaper story of the

daylight! How shockingly bo

young lady was at the teller's window when the robber came

nk of it! Why, child, if anything had happened, a terrible murder might have been commi

ed at the purely personal limitat

st because I happened to be there. Yet it seems ridicu

dible?

, not quite comfortable some way; but the young man was smiling pleasantly, and he looked like anything rather than a desperate criminal. I can close

sm, unweakened by her long residence

otte? Would you recognize him if you sh

quite sur

uldn't trace you by your father's draft a

suppose they could, if they wante

the robber, sooner or later, and if they know how to f

d, but she had, or believed she had, very clear and well-defined ideas of her ow

a simple duty to go willingly. The first thing I thought of was tha

here could be no possible need for Charlotte's interference. Mr. Galbraith and the teller would be able to identify the robber, and a thousand eye-witnesses could do no more. At the end of the argument the con

sed. Not from the younger woman's thoughts, however. In the reflective field the scene in the bank recurred again and again until present

last instalment of the current serial, Charlotte let her book slip from her fingers and gave hersel

unding the plantation mansions on either bank. The majestic onrush of the steamer, the rhythmic drumbeat of the machinery, the alternating crash and pa

hom it was the birthland. Then the haunting scene in the New Orleans bank returned to disenchant her; and after striving vainly to put it aside, she reopened her book. But by this time the story had lo

hat the ropes were working loose. When it became evident that the boat would shortly fall into the river and go adrift, she got up and put the book aside, meanin

shoes of the man whom he had supplanted. But at this crisis the machinery of dissimulation slipped a cog. Where the ordinary deck-hand would have gone about his

e a great bound and then seemed suddenly to forget its office. While he was passing she clung to the back of her chair and forebore to cry out or otherwise to advertise her emotion. But when the strain was off she sank into her seat and closed her eyes to grapple with the unnerving discovery. It was useless to try to escape from the disma

d in honesty of purpose. None the less, she was a woman. And when she saw what was before her, conscience tur

caping bank robber, it was doubtful if any would recognize him as she had; and if she should hold her pe

re might be remaining in him? What did she know of his temptations? of the chain of circumstances which had dragged him down into the company of the desperately criminal? Some such compelling influence there must have been, she reasoned

and straightforward thing to do was to go immediately to the captain and tell him of her discovery, but she shrank from the thought of what must follow. They would seize him: he

resident Galbraith, giving such a description of the deck-hand as would enable the officers to identify him without

write to Mr. Galbraith until after we reached home-until I had told papa. I

been given time to make its claim paramount to that of the conventional pro

ar," she said. "I've been thinking it over, too. But it

d. Nevertheless, she went away quickly and locked herself in her state room to write the fateful lett