"You here, Maggie Miller!--here with the others who know my secret!
But you shan't wring it from me. You shall never know it, unless the
dead rise up to tell you."

"Hagar Warren," said Margaret sternly, "is murder your secret? Did
Hester Hamilton die at her mother's hands?"

With a short gasping moan, Hagar staggered backward a pace or two, and
then, standing far more erect than Margaret had ever seen her before,
she answered: "No, Maggie Miller, no; murder is not my secret. These
hands," and she tossed in the air her shriveled arms, "these hands are
as free from blood as yours. And now go. Leave me alone with my dead,
and see that you tell no tales. You like secrets, you say. Let what
you have heard to-night be _your_ secret. Go."

Maggie obeyed, and walked slowly homeward, feeling greatly relieved
that her suspicion was false, and experiencing a degree of
satisfaction in thinking that she too had a secret, which she would
guard most carefully from her grandmother and Theo. "She would never
tell them what she had seen and heard--never!"

Seated upon the piazza were Madam Conway and Theo, the former of whom
chided her for staying so late at the cottage, while Theo asked what
queer things the old witch-woman had said to-night.

With a very expressive look, which seemed to say, "I know, but I
shan't tell," Maggie seated herself at her grandmother's feet, and
asked how long Hagar had been crazy. "Did it come upon her when her
daughter died?" she inquired; and Madam Conway answered: "Yes, about
that time, or more particularly when the baby died. Then she began to