t. It may be a long time before our friend is
thoroughly re-established in health but it is quite probable that he
will be well enough, and determined enough, to face some of his problems
in the spring. He will turn to you. Are you going to be able to help
him? When he comes to you will he find a silly, nervous girl, all
horrors and regrets and useless might-have-beens or will he find you
strong and sane, healthily poised, ready to face the future and let the
dead past go? For the past is dead--believe me!

"You have seemed to me to be an excellently normal young person, but no
doubt the shock and trouble of late events have done much to disturb
your normality. Can you get it back? On the answer to that, depends
Callandar's future. I shall keep you informed, weekly, of his progress."

Esther had thought deeply over this letter. Its brief, stern truth was
exactly the tonic she needed. Like a strong hand it reached down into
her direful pit of morbid musings, and, clinging to it, she struggled
back into the sunlight. Above all and in spite of everything, she must
not fail the man she loved!

At first she had to fight with terrors. She feared she knew not what.
The vision of Mary upon the bed, still and ghastly in the golden light
of morning, came back to shake her heart. The memory of Callandar's
face, of the frantic struggle to drag the dead woman back to life, made
many a night hideous. The endless questioning, Could it have been
prevented? Could I have done more? tortured her, but by and by, as she
faced them bravely, these terrors lost their baleful power. Her youth
and common-sense triumphed.

The school helped. One cannot continue very morbid with a roomful of
happy, noisy children to teach and keep in order. Jane's need of her
helped, for she, dared not give way to brooding when the child was
near. Aunt Amy helped--perhaps most of all. She was a constant wonder
to the girl, so cheerful was she, so thoughtful of others, so forgetful
of herself. Her little fancies seemed to have ceased to fret her, there
was a new peace in her faded eyes. Sometimes as she went about the house
she would sing a little, in a high thready voice, bits from songs that
were popular in her youth. "The Blue Alsatian Mountains" or "When You
and I Were Young, Maggie" or "Darling Nellie Grey." She told Esther that
it was because she felt "safe." "The blackness hardly ever comes now,"
she said. "I don't think 'They' will bother me any more."