had come to death, and how she should rejoice that she was safe, but her
reply had been a rush of tears, and "Oh, yes, you always think of the baby,
never of me, your wife!"

With a sigh the man had turned from his fruitless effort to calm her
troubled mind and gone to his little daughter. He had hoped that his wife
would go with him, but he saw the hopelessness of that idea.

The little girl lay with one plump white arm thrown over her head, the
curling baby fingers just touching the rosy cheek, flushed with sleep.
She looked like a rosebud herself, so beautiful among the rose and lacey
draperies of her couch. Her dark curls, so fine and soft and wonderful,
with their hidden purple shadows, and the long dark curling lashes, to
match the finely pencilled brows, brought out each delicate feature of the
lovely little face. The father, as he looked down upon her, wondered how it
could have been in the heart of any creature, no matter how wicked, to put
out this vivid little life. His little Starr, his one treasure!

The man that had tried to do it, could he have intended it really, or was
it only a random shot? The testimony of those who saw judged it intention.
The father's quickened heart-beats told him it was, and he felt that the
thrust had gone deep. How they had meant to hurt him! How they must have
hated him to have wished to hurt him so! How they would have hurt his life
irretrievably if the shot had done its work. If that other little atom of
human life had not intervened!

Where was the boy who had saved his child? He must go and see him at once.
The gratitude of a lifetime should be his.

Morton divined his thought, as he stepped from the sacred crib softly after