letter found on my Zoe when she died--addressed to me. The doctor knew.
There is no mistake."

He held out the letter for her to see. "As you can read here, my
daughter was on her way back to the Manor Cartier, to her old home at
St. Saviour's. She was on her way back when she died. If she had lived
I should have had them both; but one is left, according to the will of
God. And so I will take her--this flower of the prairie--and begin life
again."

The face Norah turned on him had that look which is in the face of an
animal, when its young is being forced from it--fierce, hungering,
furtive, vicious.

"The child is mine," she exclaimed--"mine and no other's. The prairie
gave it to me. It came to me out of the storm. 'Tis mine-mine only.
I was barren and wantin', and my man was slippin' from me, because there
was only two of us in our home. I was older than him, and yonder was a
girl with hair like a sheaf of wheat in the sun, and she kept lookin' at
him, and he kept goin' to her. 'Twas a man she wanted, 'twas a child he
wanted, and there they were wantin', and me atin' my heart out with
passion and pride and shame and sorrow. There was he wantin' a child,
and the girl wantin' a man, and I only wantin' what God should grant all
women that give themselves to a man's arms after the priest has blessed
them. And whin all was at the worst, and it looked as if he was away
with her--the girl yonder--then two things happened. A man--he was me
own brother and a millionaire if I do say it--he took her and married
her; and then, too, Heaven's will sent this child's mother to her last
end and the child itself to my Nolan's arms. To my husband's arms first
it came, you understand; and he give the child to me, as it should be,