what I got to tell you."

"Can't it wait, Mrs. Smelts?" asked Nance, with a pitying hand on the
feverish brow across which a long white scar extended.

"No. They're goin' to take me away in the mornin'. I heard 'em say
so. It's about Birdie, Nance, I want to tell you. They've had to
lock her up."

"It's the fever makes you think that, Mrs. Smelts. You let me sponge you
off a bit."

"No, no, not yet. She's crazy, I tell you! She went out of her head last
January when the baby come. Dan's kept it to hisself all this time, but
now he's had to send her to the asylum."

"Who told you?"

"Dan did. He wrote me when he sent me the last money. I got his
letter here under my pillow. I want you to burn it, Nance, so no one
won't know."

Nance went on mechanically stroking the pain-racked head, as she reached
under the pillow for Dan's letter. The sight of the neat, painstaking
writing made her heart contract.

"You tell him fer me," begged Mrs. Smelts, weakly, "to be good to her.
She never had the right start. Her paw handled me rough before she come,
an' she was always skeery an' nervous like. But she was so purty, oh, so
purty, an' me so proud of her!"