ward-glancing
of her feeling dark eyes.

"Who can tell?" Frances answered, turning her head away.

Maggie drew the sheet over him and stood looking down into his severe
white face.

"If he could speak he would ask for his mother, and for water then,
and after that the one he loves. That is the way a man's mind carries
those three precious things when death blows its breath in his face."

"I do not know," said Frances, slowly.

There was such stress in waiting, such silence in the world, and such
emptiness and pain! Reverently as Maggie's voice was lowered, soft and
sympathetic as her word, Frances longed for her to be still, and go
and leave her alone with him. She longed to hold the dear spark of his
faltering life in her own hands, alone, quite alone; to warm it back
to strength in her own lone heart. Surely her name could not be the
last in his remembrance, no matter for the disturbing breath of
death.

"I will bring you some food," said Maggie. "To give him life out of
your life you must be strong."

* * * * *

Frances started out of her sleep in the rocking-chair before the fire.
She had turned the lamp low, but there was a flare of light on her
face. Her faculties were so deeply sunk in that insidious sleep which
had crept upon her like a bindweed upon wheat that she struggled to
rise from it. She sprang up, her mind groping, remembering that there
was something for which she was under heavy responsibility, but unable
for a moment to bring it back to its place.

Nola was in the door with a candle, shading the flame from her eyes
with her hand. Her hair was about her shoulders, her feet were bare
under the hem of her long dressing-robe. She was staring, her lips
were open, her breath was quick, as if she had arrived after a run.

"Is he--alive?" she whispered.

"Why should you come to ask? What is his life to you?" asked Frances,
sorrowfully bitter.

"Oh, Maggie just woke and came up to tell me, mother doesn't
know--she's just gone to bed. Isn't it terrible, Frances!"

Nola spoke distractedly, as if in great agony, or great fear.

"He can't harm any of you now, you're safe." Frances was hard and
scornful. She turned from Nola and laid her hand on Macdonald's brow,
drawing her breath with a relieved sigh when she felt the warmth of
life still there.

"Oh, Frances, Frances!" Nola moaned, with expression of despair,
"isn't this terrible!"

"If you mean it