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impulsively, that he would double the sum of money he was offering her. He took the document from her, crossed out the former sum and hastily wrote in the new, seeing with satisfaction the girl’s widened eyes. “Miss Raumlicht, for the good of us all, you must. ”
    Yet at 5:35 P.M. , Mina Raumlicht again laid down the pen and, hiding her face in her hands, wept; saying, in a near-inaudible voice, “—but in accepting so much money, I am compounding my wickedness . . . am I not?”
    â€œAssuredly, Miss Raumlicht, you are not. ” Tyler’s face flushed with excitement; an artery beat hard in his throat, on the verge of triumph.“I am the man to tell you that. You must listen, no longer to Maynard, for he cannot help you in the slightest, but to me. ”
    Still, it would not be until 6:13 P.M. that the little seamstress’s assistant from Innisfail again took up the pen, and bravely signed her name, to Tyler’s surpassing joy.
    Mina Raumlicht      13 May 1909
9.
    Though Tyler was elated, and fairly bursting with enthusiasm at the conclusion of this long session, yet how drawn and defeated Mina Raumlicht appeared. As if we have been engaged in a physical, and not merely a mental, struggle. And I have won.
    Still, Mina Raumlicht managed to thank her benefactor, in a courteous voice, and to accept from Tyler’s hand a considerable quantity of cash ($8,000 in varying, mainly large denominations, taken from the Stirlings’ safe, for the family did not trust banks after the local panic following the sinking of the Maine in January 1898), which she carried away in a handsome kidskin traveling bag belonging to Fanny Stirling (which was happily donated by Fanny, whose relief at the outcome of the consultation with Mina Raumlicht may have exceeded Tyler’s). “Thank you, Mrs. Stirling,” Miss Raumlicht said, making a charming if awkward little curtsy, in the foyer of the town house, “—and thank you, Mr. Stirling. I will always remember you with the high regard with which I will always remember— him. ‘As above, so below’—it is said—which gives me courage, for what we must endure on Earth is ordained for us in the heavens, and, in the heavens if not on Earth, we who dwell in darkness shall be justified.”
    A remarkable little speech to issue from the lips of a seventeen-year-old seamstress’s assistant, especially one who staggered beneath the weight of an eight-month pregnancy! Rendered quite speechless themselves, Tyler Stirling and his sister-in-law Fanny exchanged a perplexed glance.
    By this time, however, the hackney cab had arrived which would deliver Miss Raumlicht, prepaid, to the Contracoeur train station. Tyler lost no time in escorting the girl out to the curb, and out of the lives of the Stirlings, forever.
    And so God spared us Fanny would exult in secret from the horror of public scandal beside which the very fires of hell seem benign!
10.
    Who is she? Where has she come from, and where is she bound?
    Unknown to his mother or his uncle, Warren Stirling slipped from the house at Greenley Square to follow the cab, on foot, for many blocks, keeping a vigorous pace until, at Highland Boulevard, he saw to his surprise that the cab stopped; the mysterious girl in the dark traveling cloak, with whom his uncle had been shut up for most of the day, in what must have been a secret conference, climbed gracefully down, and sent the cab away. How lovely she looked, the velveteen hood now removed from her head, her silvery-brown plaited crown shining! Carrying what appeared to be Mrs. Stirling’s kidskin bag, the girl made her way, unescorted, yet with no suggestion of hesitation or shyness now, briskly along the crowded sidewalk, past the somber portico of the Presbyterian church, where generations of Stirlings had worshipped; past the handsome Neo-Grecian facade of the Contracoeur Hotel; and finally, again to