o picture the rest of that
excitement. Suffice it to say that the events of the next hour are not
likely to be forgotten by those who were connected with them. Eurie came
back to her senses first, and met and explained to the people who had
heard the alarm, and were eagerly gathering with offers of help. There
was much talk, and many exclamations of thankfulness and much laughter,
and at last everything was growing quiet again.

"I can not find the doctor," Flossy had reported in despair. "He has
gone to Mayville, but Mr. Roberts will be here in a minute with a
remedy, and he is going right over to Mayville for the doctor."

"Don't let him, I beg," said Marion, who was herself again. "There is
nothing more formidable than a spoonful of your hair-oil. I don't know
but the poor child needs an emetic to get rid of that. Eurie, my dear,
can't you impress it on those dear people that we _don't want_ any hot
water? I hear the fourth pail coming."

It was midnight before this excited group settled down into anything
like quiet. But the strain had been so great, and the relief so
complete, that a sleep so heavy that it was almost a stupor at last held
the tired workers.

Now, what of it all? Why did this foolish mistake of bottles, which
might have been a tragedy, and was nothing but a causeless excitement,
reach so far with its results?

Let me tell you of one to whom sleep did not come. That was the one who
but half an hour before had believed herself face to face with death!
What mattered it to her that it was a mistake, and death no nearer to
her, so far as she knew, than to the rest of the sleeping world?

Death was not annihilated--he was only held at bay. She knew that he
_would_ come, and that there would be no slipping away when his hand
actually grasped hers. She believed in death; she had supposed herself
being drawn into his remorseless grasp. To her the experience, so far as
it had led her, was just as real as though there had been no mistake.

And the result? _She had been afraid_! All her proper resolutions, so
fresh in her mind, made only that very afternoon, had been of no more
help to her than so much foam. She had not so much as remembered in her
hour of terror whether there _was_ a church to join. But that there was
a God, and a judgment, and a Savior, who was not hers, had been as real
and vivid as she thinks it ever can be, even when she stands on the very
brink.

Oh, that long night of agony! whe