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“Judge Priest, perhaps you will not understand me, but the mother instinct is a curious thing. Through these last few years of my life I have felt as though there were two women inside of me. One of these women grieved because her child had denied her. The other of these women was reconciled because she could see reflected in the actions of that child the traits of a breed of strangers. And yet both these women can still find it in them to forgive her for all that she has done and all that she may ever do. That’s motherhood, I suppose.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said slowly, “I reckin you’re right–that’s motherhood.” He tugged at his tab of white chin whisker, and his puckered old eyes behind their glasses were shadowed with a deep compassion. Then with a jerk he sat erect.

“I take it that you adopted the child legally?” he said, seeking to make his tone casual.

“We took her just as I told you,” she answered. “We always treated her as though she had been ours. She never knew any difference.”

“Yes, ma’am, quite so. You’ve made that clear enough. But by law, before you left Maryland, you gave her your name, I suppose? You went through the legal form of law of adoptin’ her, didn’t you?”

“No, sir, we didn’t do that. It didn’t seem necessary–it never occurred to us to do it. Her mother was dead and her father was gone nobody knew where. He had abandoned her, had shown he didn’t care what might become of her. And her mother on her deathbed had given her to me. Wasn’t that sufficient?”

Apparently he had not heard her question. Instead of answering it he put one of his own:

“Do you reckin now, ma’am, by any chance that there are any people still livin’ back there in that town of Calais–old neighbors of yours, or kinfolks maybe–who’d remember the circumstances in reguard to your havin’ took this baby in the manner which you have described?”

“Yes, sir; two at least that I know of are still living. One is my half sister. I haven’t seen her in twenty-odd years, but I hear from her regularly. And another is a man who boarded with us at the time. He was young then and very poor, but he has become well-to-do since. He lives in Baltimore now; is prominent there in politics. Occasionally I see his name in the paper. He has been to Congress and he ran for senator once. And there may be still others if I could think of them.”

“Never mind the others; the two you’ve named will be sufficient. Whut did you say their names were, ma’am?”

She told him. He repeated them after her as though striving to fix them in his memory.

“Ah-hah,” he said. “Ma’am, have you got some writin’ material handy? Any blank paper will do–and a pen and ink?”

From a little stand in a corner she brought him what he required, and wonderingly but in silence watched him as he put down perhaps a dozen close-written lines. She bided until he had concluded his task and read through the script, making a change here and there. Then all at once some confused sense of realization of his new purpose came to her. She stood up and took a step forward and laid one apprehensive hand upon the paper as though to stay him.

“Judge Priest,” she said, “what have you written down here? And what do you mean to do with what you have written?”

“Whut I have written here is a short statement–a memorandum, really, of whut you have been tellin’ me, ma’am,” he explained. “I’ll have it written out more fully in the form of an affidavit, and then to-morrow I want you to sign it either here or at my office in the presence of witnesses.”

“But is it necessary?” she demurred. “I’m ignorant of the law, and you spoke just now of my failure to adopt Ellie by law. But if at this late date I must do it, can’t it be done privately, in secret, so that neither Ellie nor anyone else will ever know?”