me this minute!"

Ellen, meanwhile, that little tender blossom tossed helplessly by
contending waves of love, was weeping and trembling with joy at the
feel of her mother's arms and with awe and terror at this tempest of
passion which she had evoked.

"Give her to me!" demanded Mrs. Zelotes Brewster.

The crowd who had followed stood gaping with working faces. The
mothers wept over their own children. Eva stood at her sister's
elbow, with a hand on one of the child's, which was laid over
Fanny's shoulder. Jim Tenny had his face hidden on his horse's neck.

"Give her to me!" said Mrs. Zelotes again. "Give her to me, I say! I
am her own grandmother!"

"And I am her own mother!" called out Fanny, with a great
master-note of love and triumph and defiance. "I'm her own mother,
and I've got her, and nobody but God shall take her from me again."
The tears streamed down her cheeks; she kissed the child with pale,
parted lips. She was at once pathetic and terrible. She was human
love and selfishness incarnate.

Mrs. Zelotes Brewster stared at her, and her face changed suddenly
and softened. She turned and went back into her own house. Her gray
head appeared a second beside her window, then sank out of sight.
She was kneeling there with her Bible at her side, a sudden sweet
humility of thankfulness rising from her whole spirit like a
perfume, when Fanny, with Eva following, still clinging to the