til, with a long, deep sigh, the sick man
opened his eyes and stared dully at the white-robed figure bending over
him.

"Who--what are you?" he said faintly.

Miss Stella smiled. It was the question that many a patient, struggling
out of the Dark Valley, had asked before, when his waking eyes had fallen
upon her fair, sweet face, her white-robed form.

"Only your nurse," she answered softly,--"your nurse who has come to help
you, to take care of you. You feel better already?"

"Yes, better, better!" was the faint reply. "My boy,--where is my boy?
Freddy! Freddy!" He stretched out his feeble hand. But it was met by a
firm, gentle grasp that was not Freddy's.

"No boys now," said Miss Stella in the soft, steady voice of one used to
such commands. "There must be no seeing, no talking, even no thinking, my
patient. You must take this powder I am putting to your lips. Close your
eyes again and go to sleep.--Now please everybody go away and leave him to
me," was the whispered ukase, that even Father Tom obeyed without protest;
and Miss Stella began her reign at Killykinick.

It was a triumphant reign from the very first. Old and young fell at once
under her gentle sway, and yielded to her command without dispute. The
cabin of the "Lady Jane" was given to her entirely; even Brother Bart
taking to the upper deck; while a big, disused awning was stretched into a
shelter for the morning and the noontime mess.

And, to say nothing of her patient--who lay, as Brother Bart expressed it,
"like a shorn lamb" under her gentle bidding, gaining health and strength
each day,--every creature in Killykinick was subservient to Miss Stella's
sweet will. Freddy was her devoted slave; lazy Jim, ready to move at her
whisper; even Dud, after learning her father's rank in the army, was ready
to oblige her as a gentleman should. But it was Dan, as she had foreseen
from the first, who was her right-hand man, ready to fetch and carry, to
lift any burden, however heavy, by day and night; Dan who rowed or sailed
or skimmed to any point in the motor boat Father Tom kept waiting at her
demand; Dan who, when the patient grew better, and she had an hour or two
off, was her willing and delighted escort over rocks or sea.

And as they sailed or rowed or loitered by beach and shore, Miss Stella
drew from Aunt Winnie's boy the hopes and fears he could not altogether
hide. She learned how Aunt Winnie was "pining" for her home and her boy;
she read the l