IN WHICH KEZIAH BREAKS THE NEWS It was nearly five o'clock, gray dawn of what was to be a clear, beautiful summer morning, when Keziah softly lifted the latch and entered the parsonage.

All night she had been busy at the Hammond tavern.

Busy with the doctor and the undertaker, who had been called from his bed by young Higgins; busy with Grace, soothing her, comforting her as best she could, and petting her as a mother might pet a stricken child.

The poor girl was on the verge of prostration, and from hysterical spasms of sobs and weeping passed to stretches of silent, dry-eyed agony which were harder to witness and much more to be feared.
"It is all my fault," she repeated over and over again.

"All my fault! I killed him! I killed him, Aunt Keziah! What shall I do?
Oh, why couldn't I have died instead?
It would have been so much better, better for everybody." "Ss-sh! ss-sh! deary," murmured the older woman.