act so strangely that I removed you from her care, for, from something
she said, I fancied she meditated harm to you."

For a moment Maggie sat wrapped in thought--then clapping her hands
together she exclaimed: "I have it; I know now what ails her! She felt
so badly to see you happy with me that she tried to poison me. She
said she was sorely tempted--and that's the secret which is killing
her."

"Secret! What secret?" cried Theo; and, womanlike, forgetting her
resolution not to tell, Maggie told what she had seen and heard,
adding it as her firm belief that Hagar had made an attempt upon her
life.

"I would advise you for the future to keep away from her, then," said
Madam Conway, to whom the suggestion seemed a very probable one.

But Maggie knew full well that whatever Hagar might once have thought
to do, there was no danger to be apprehended from her now, and the
next day found her as usual on her way to the cottage. Bounding into
the room where the old woman sat at her knitting, she exclaimed: "I
know what it is! I know your secret!"

There was a gathering mist before Hagar's eyes, and her face was
deathly white, as she gasped: "You know the secret! How? Where? Have
the dead come back to tell? Did anybody see me do it?"

"Why, no," answered Maggie, beginning to grow a little mystified. "The
dead have nothing to do with it. You tried to poison me when I was a
baby, and that's what makes you crazy. Isn't it so? Grandma thought it