But the Titan roared aloud: "No; get out. Think I'm a-going to
give you a chance to grab my money now? Let me die and go to hell
in peace."

Father Leblanc knelt meekly and prayed, and the woman's weak
pleadings continued,--

"Tony, I've been true and good and faithful to you. Don't die
and leave me no better than before. Tony, I do want to be a good
woman once, a real-for-true married woman. Tony, here's the
priest; say yes." And she wrung her ringless hands.

"You want my money," said Tony, slowly, "and you sha'n't have it,
not a cent; John shall have it."

Father Leblanc shrank away like a fading spectre. He came next
day and next day, only to see re-enacted the same piteous
scene,--the woman pleading to be made a wife ere death hushed
Tony's blasphemies, the man chuckling in pain-racked glee at the
prospect of her bereaved misery. Not all the prayers of Father
Leblanc nor the wailings of Mrs. Murphy could alter the
determination of the will beneath the shock of hair; he gloated
in his physical weakness at the tenacious grasp on his mentality.

"Tony," she wailed on the last day, her voice rising to a shriek
in its eagerness, "tell them I'm your wife; it'll be the same.
Only say it, Tony, before you die!"

He raised his head, and turned stiff eyes and gibbering mouth on