"
"Well, I saw her. I wanted to get what information she had of you and
of Henry."
"She had a good deal of it, if she wanted to give it up."
"So I supposed. But she was too clever for me. She spoke well of you,
but not a word could I get from her about Henry. Yet she gave me the
idea that she knew much."
"I should think she might. I had told her the whole story."
"She is a strange woman."
"She was able to hold her tongue."
"A strange gift, you mean to say, I suppose," laughed Mrs. Knapp.
"She was quite as successful in concealing from me the fact that she
had ever had word with you, though I suspected that she knew more than
she told."
"She is used to keeping secrets, I suppose," replied Mrs. Knapp. "But I
must reward her well for what she has done."
"She is beyond fear or reward."
"Dead?" cried Mrs. Knapp in a shocked voice. "And how?"
"She died, I fear, because she befriended me." And then I told her the
story of Mother Borton's end.
"Poor creature!" said Mrs. Knapp sadly. "Yet perhaps it is better so.
She has died in doing a good act."
"She was a good friend to me," I said. "I should have been in the
morgue before her, I fear, but for her good will."
Mrs. Knapp was silent for a minute.
"I hope we are at the end of the tale of death," she said at last. "It
is dreadful that insane greed and malice should spread their evil so
far about. Two lives have been sacrificed already, and perhaps it is
only the beginning.
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