that warned her down
again, for her life.

And then, other hours, or minutes, she knows not which, went by.

And then, a stir--a feeble word--a whisper from Nurse Sampson--a low
"Thank God!" from her mother.

The crisis was passed. Henderson Gartney lived.

CHAPTER X.

ROUGH ENDS.

"So others shall
Take patience, labor, to their heart and hand,
From thy hand and thy heart, and thy brave cheer,
And God's grace fructify through thee to all."
MRS. BROWNING.

"M. S. What does that stand for?" said little Hendie, reading the white
letters painted on the black leather bottom of nurse's carpetbag. He got
back, now, often, in the daytime, to his old nursery quarters, where his
father liked to hear his chatter and play, for a short time
together--though he still slept, with Mahala, upstairs. "Does that mean
'Miss Sampson'?"

Faith glanced up from her stocking mending, with a little fun and a
little curiosity in her eyes.

"What does 'M.' stand for?" repeated Hendie.

The nurse was "setting to rights" about the room. She turned round at
the question, from hanging a towel straight over the stand, and looked a
little amazed, as if she had almost forgotten, herself. But it came out,
with a quick opening and shutting of the thin lips, like the snipping of
a pair of scissors--"Mehitable."

Faith had been greatly drawn to this odd, efficient woman. Beside that
her skillful, untiring nursing had humanly, been the means of saving her
father's life, which alone had warmed her with an earnest gratitude that
was restless to prove itself, and that welled up in every glance and
tone she gave Miss Sampson, there were a certain respect and interest
that could not withhold themselves from one who so evidently worked on
with a great motive that dignified her smallest acts. In whom
self-abnegation was the underlying principle of all daily doing.

Miss Sampson had stayed on at the Gartneys', notwithstanding the
doctor's prediction, and her usual habit. And, in truth, her patient did
not "get well _too_ fast." She was needed now as really as ever, though
the immediate danger which had summoned her was past, and the fever had
gone. The months of overstrained effort and anxiety that had culminated
in its violent attack were telling upon him now, in the scarcely less
perilous prostration that followed. And Mrs. Gartney had quite given out
since the excessive tension of ner