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The Twins of Table Mountain by Bret Harte
page 57 of 163 (34%)

"Perhaps I was wrong to think, that, after I am gone, you would care to
tell him anything. Perhaps I'm wrong to think of it at all, or to care
what he will think of me, except for the sake of the child--his child,
Rand--that I must leave behind me. He will know that IT never abused
him. No, God bless its sweet heart! IT never was wild and wicked and
hateful, like its cruel, crazy mother. And he will love it; and you,
perhaps, will love it too--just a little, Rand! Look at it!" She tried
to raise the helpless bundle beside her in her arms, but failed. "You
must lean over," she said faintly to Rand. "It looks like him, doesn't
it?"

Rand, with wondering, embarrassed eyes, tried to see some resemblance,
in the little blue-red oval, to the sad, wistful face of his brother,
which even then was haunting him from some mysterious distance. He
kissed the child's forehead, but even then so vaguely and perfunctorily,
that the mother sighed, and drew it closer to her breast.

"The doctor says," she continued in a calmer voice, "that I'm not doing
as well as I ought to. I don't think," she faltered, with something of
her old bitter laugh, "that I'm ever doing as well as I ought to, and
perhaps it's not strange now that I don't. And he says that, in case
anything happens to me, I ought to look ahead. I have looked ahead.
It's a dark look ahead, Rand--a horror of blackness, without kind faces,
without the baby, without--without HIM!"

She turned her face away, and laid it on the bundle by her side. It was
so quiet in the cabin, that, through the open door beyond, the faint,
rhythmical moan of the pines below was distinctly heard.

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