"There's one thing I ain't told you. I didn't want to tell
you yet because I was afraid you might be sorry--but if he says I'm
going to die I've got to say it." She stopped to cough, and to Ann
Eliza it now seemed as though every cough struck a minute from the
hours remaining to her.

"Don't talk now--you're tired."

"I'll be tireder to-morrow, I guess. And I want you should
know. Sit down close to me--there."

Ann Eliza sat down in silence, stroking her shrunken hand.

"I'm a Roman Catholic, Ann Eliza."

"Evelina--oh, Evelina Bunner! A Roman Catholic--YOU?
Oh, Evelina, did HE make you?"

Evelina shook her head. "I guess he didn't have no religion;
he never spoke of it. But you see Mrs. Hochmuller was a Catholic,
and so when I was sick she got the doctor to send me to a Roman
Catholic hospital, and the sisters was so good to me there--and the
priest used to come and talk to me; and the things he said kep' me
from going crazy. He seemed to make everything easier."

"Oh, sister, how could you?" Ann Eliza wailed. She knew
little of the Catholic religion except that "Papists" believed in
it--in itself a sufficient indictment. Her spiritual rebellion had
not freed her from the formal part of her religious belief, and
apostasy had always seemed to her one of the sins from which the