the child! Morris Frank arrested her, seized her by the wrist, and drew her in through the door of the back office. With an old instinct of fear she resisted and struggled. His father, the overseer, had not handled her color too softly.
"For God's sake let me go! What do you want? I haven't done anything!" she cried.
"Tell me, tell me the truth about that child,—about that baby!"
He questioned, he cross-questioned, he twisted and turned her answers.
"As there is a God in heaven, it's the truth! As the blessed Virgin hears me, it's the truth! Ask Monsieur Goupilleau, ask the priest, ask old Uncle Ursin on the plantation,—they all know it! Mr. Frank, Mr. Morris, you are not going to harm her! I kept it from you; I would have died before you found it out from me! She doesn't know it! No one knows it!"
The same old terror of causeless violence that had made her a fugitive eighteen years ago possessed her again, sweeping away reason and presence of mind, making her believe, with the
