ssession of the soul all other feelings are crowded
aside. Never in all her life had Leslie Moore shuddered away from the
future with more intolerable terror. But she went forward as
unswervingly in the path she had elected as the martyrs of old walked
their chosen way, knowing the end of it to be the fiery agony of the
stake.

The financial question was settled with greater ease than Anne had
feared. Leslie borrowed the necessary money from Captain Jim, and, at
her insistence, he took a mortgage on the little farm.

"So that is one thing off the poor girl's mind," Miss Cornelia told
Anne, "and off mine too. Now, if Dick gets well enough to work again
he'll be able to earn enough to pay the interest on it; and if he
doesn't I know Captain Jim'll manage someway that Leslie won't have to.
He said as much to me. 'I'm getting old, Cornelia,' he said, 'and I've
no chick or child of my own. Leslie won't take a gift from a living
man, but mebbe she will from a dead one.' So it will be all right as
far as THAT goes. I wish everything else might be settled as
satisfactorily. As for that wretch of a Dick, he's been awful these
last few days. The devil was in him, believe ME! Leslie and I
couldn't get on with our work for the tricks he'd play. He chased all
her ducks one day around the yard till most of them died. And not one
thing would he do for us. Sometimes, you know, he'll make himself
quite handy, bringing in pails of water and wood. But this week if we
sent him to the well he'd try to climb down into it. I thought once,
'If you'd only shoot down there head-first everything would be nicely
settled.'"

"Oh, Miss Cornelia!"

"Now, you needn't Miss Cornelia me, Anne, dearie. ANYBODY would have
thought the same. If the Montreal doctors can make a rational creature
out of Dick Moore they're wonders."

Leslie took Dick to Montreal early in May. Gilbert went with her, to
help her, and make the necessary arrangements for her. He came home
with the report that the Montreal surgeon whom they had consulted
agreed with him that there was a good chance of Dick's restoration.

"Very comforting," was Miss Cornelia's sarcastic comment.

Anne only sighed. Leslie had been very distant at their parting.

But she had promised to write. Ten days after Gilbert's return the
letter came. Leslie wrote that the operation had been successfully
performed and that Dick was making a good recovery.

"What does she mean by