"If our child lives, there is hope that my wife will live?"

"A strong hope. I speak with confidence."

"And if our child dies?"

"The mother will die."

No voice was speaking in the chamber of death, but Aaron heard again these words, which had passed between the doctor and himself. If the child lived, the mother would live; if the child died, the mother would die.

A black darkness fell upon his soul. His mind, his soul, every principle of his being, was engulfed in the one despairing thought that Rachel was doomed, that, although she was sleeping peacefully before his eyes, death would be her portion when she awoke to the fact that her babe had been taken from her.

"If, when she wakes, all is well with the child, all will be well with her."

The spiritual echo of the doctor's words uttered but a few hours ago. He heard them as clearly as he had heard the others.

How to avert the threatened doom? How to save his Rachel's life? Prayer would not avail, or he would have flown to it instinctively. It was not that he asked himself the question, or that in his agony he doubted or believed in the efficacy of prayer. It may be, indeed, that he evaded it, for already a strange and terrible temptation was invading the fortress of his soul. To save the life of his beloved was he ready to commit a sin? What was the true interpretation of sin? A perpetrated act which would benefit one human being to the injury of another. Then, if an act were perpetrated which would ensure the happiness and well-doing not of one human creature, but of three, and would inflict injury upon no living soul, that act was not a sin--unmistakably not a sin. But if this were really so, wherefore the necessity for impressing it upon himself? The conviction that he was acting justly in an hour of woe, that the contemplated act was not open to doubt in a moral or religious sense, was in itself sufficient. Wherefore, then, the iteration that it was not a sin?

He could not think the matter out in the presence of Rachel and of his dead child. He stole down to his room, and gave himself up to reflection. He turned down the gas almost to vanishing point, and stood in the dark, now thinking in silence, now uttering his thoughts aloud.

A friend had come to him and begged him to receive into his household a babe, a girl, of the same age as his own babe lying dead in the room above. She was deserted, friendless, alone. All natural claims had been abandoned, and the infant was thrown upon the world, without parents, without kith or kin. Even while he believed his own child to be alive he had decided to accept the trust. Why should he hesitate now that his child was dead? It was almost like a miraculous interposition, or so he chose to present it to himself.

"Even as we spoke together," he said aloud, "my child had passed away. Even as I hesitated the messenger was urging me to accept the trust. It was as if an angel had presented himself, and said, 'The life of your beloved hangs upon the life of a babe, and the Eternal has called her child to Him. Here is another to take her place. The mother will not know; she is blind, and has never seen the face of her babe, has scarcely heard its voice. To-morrow she lives or dies--it is the critical day in her existence--and whether she lives or dies rests with you, and with you alone. Science is powerless to help her in her hour of trial; love alone will lift her into life, into joy, into happiness; and upon you lies the responsibility. It is for you to pronounce the sentence--life or death for your beloved, life or death for a good woman who, if you do not harden your heart, will shed peace and blessings upon all around her. Embrace the gift that God has offered you. Allow no small scruples to drive you from the duty of love.' Yes," cried Aaron in a louder tone, "it was as if an angel spoke. Rachel shall live!"

If there was sophistry in this reasoning he did not see it; but the still small voice whispered,--

"It is a deception, you are about to practise. You are about to place in your wife's arms a child that is not of her blood or yours. You are about to take a Christian babe to your heart, to rear and instruct her as if she were born in the old and sacred faith that has survived long centuries of suffering and oppression. Can you justify it?"

"Love justifies it," he answered. "The good that will spring from it justifies it. A sweet and ennobling life will be saved. My own life will be made the better for it, for without my beloved I should be lost, I should be lost!"

Again the voice: "It is of yourself you are thinking."

"And if I am," he answered, "if our lives are so interwoven that one would be useless and broken without the other, where is the sin?"

Again the voice: "Ah, the sin! You have pronounced the word. Remember, it is a sin of commission."

"I know it," he said, "and I can justify it--and can I not atone for it in the future? I will atone for it, if the power is given me, by charity, by good deeds. In atonement, yes, in atonement. If I can relieve some human misery, if I can lift a weight from suffering hearts, surely that will be reckoned to my account. I record here a solemn vow to make this a purpose of my life. And the child!--she will be reared in a virtuous home, she will have a good woman for a mother. With such an example before her she cannot fail to grow into a bright and useful womanhood. That will be a good work done. I pluck her from the doubtful possibilities which might otherwise attend her; no word of reproach will ever reach her ears; she will live in ignorance of the sad circumstances of her birth. Is all this nothing? Will it not weigh in the balance?"

Again the voice: "It is much, and the child is fortunate to fall into the hands of such protectors. But I repeat, in using these arguments you are not thinking of the child; you think only of yourself."

"It is not so," he said; "not alone of myself am I thinking. I am the arbiter of my wife's earthly destiny. Having the opportunity of rescuing her from death, what would my future life be if I stand idly by and see her die before my eyes? Do you ask of me that I shall be her executioner? The heart of the Eternal is filled with love; He bestows upon us the gift of love as our divinest consolation. He has bestowed it upon me in its sublimest form. Shall I lightly throw away the gift, and do a double wrong--to the child that needs a home, to the woman whose fate is in my hands? Afflict me no longer; I am resolved, and am doing what I believe to be right in the sight of the Most High."

The voic............