The rigours of Rebecca’s body eased. She sank back with a deep breath and two big tears trickled from her eyes. But almost immediately she roused again. She drew from Mahala’s clasp the hand she was holding and stretched it to Martin Moreland.
“My baby!” she cried. “What did you do with my baby? I want him! Oh, Martin, I want to see him before I die!”
Martin Moreland drew back. Slowly he shook his head.
Rebecca appealed to Mahala. She began to cry in a pitiful, broken way, her body torn by physical emotion added to the difficulty in breathing that the concussion was making.
“Mahala,” she begged, “you know the weary years that I’ve hunted and I’ve hunted. You’re the only one I ever told that I ever had a little baby—a darling little baby—and Martin Moreland took him away, and I couldn’t find him! You said you’d help me. Beg him, oh, beg him, to give me back my baby!”
Mahala arose. She took one step toward Martin Moreland and slightly extended a hand.
“Mr. Moreland,” she said, “I’d die on the rack before I’d ask anything of you for myself. Because of my word to Becky, I’m asking you now to give her back her baby.”
Mahala did not realize that the baby for which Rebecca was asking must be a man at that time. She was visioning a little pink bit of humanity bundled in white as it must have been when Rebecca had lost it. For an instant she stood thinking. She realized that some one had taken a place beside her, and looking up, she saw that Jason had been admitted to the room, and was standing near enough to reinforce her strength with his.
The dying woman saw him also, and instantly she stretched her hand toward him.
“You have always been my friend,” she said. “Help me only this once more.”