and so she sang and played with her usual glad spirit, gliding about the house with simple dignity, with a cheering word for every one, and, as Biddy said,"she was an escaped ray of light, too bright for the darkness to hide.

It ain't much, but the good soul stood by me, and I ain't ashamed to pay my debts this way, sence I can't do it in no other;" and Joe cradled the chubby baby in his one arm as tenderly as if it had been his own, though little Biddy was not an inviting infant.

It was for a long time a mystery to his masculine understanding, that Biddy could not be nursery-maid as well as cook.