, that
is Arabella's story. I shouldn't wonder if he didn't see his mother
alive,--that's all I've got to say!"

She nodded her sleek head, and disappeared into the sick-room. Lois had a
sudden contraction of the heart that made her lips white. "If aunt Deely
says Mrs. Forsythe is worse, it is surely very bad."

She stumbled blindly up-stairs; she wanted to get away from everybody,
and look this horrible fact in the face. She found her way to the garret,
whose low, wide window, full of little panes of heavy greenish glass,
looked over the tree-tops towards the western sky, still faintly yellow
with sunset light, and barred by long films of gray cloud. She knelt down
and laid her cheek against the sill, which was notched and whittled by
childish hands; for this had been a play-room once, and many a rainy
afternoon she and Helen and Gifford had spent here, masquerading in the
queer dresses and bonnets packed away in the green chests ranged against
the wall, or swinging madly in the little swing which hung from the bare
rafters, until the bunches of southernwood and sweet-marjoram and the
festoons of dried apples shook on their nails. She looked at the stars
and hearts carved on the sill, and a big "Gifford" hacked into the wood,
and she followed the letters absently with her finger.

"He blames me," she said to herself; "he sees the truth of it. How shall
I make up for it? What can I do?"

She stayed by the window until the clouds turned black in the west; down
in the heavy darkness of the garden the crickets began their monotonous
z-z-ing, and in the locust-trees the katydids answered each other with a
sharp, shrill cry. Then she crept down-stairs and sat outside of Mrs.
Forsythe's room, that she might hear the slightest sound, or note the
flicker of the night-lamp burning dimly on the stand at the bedside.

Gifford, sitting in another sick-room, was suffering with her, and
blaming himself, in spite of principle.

Mr. Denner lay in his big bed in the middle of the library. The blinds
were drawn up to the tops of the long, narrow windows, that the last
gleam of light might enter, but the room was full of shadows, save where
a taper flickered on a small table which held the medicines.

"I think," said Mr. Denner, folding his little hands upon his breast,--"I
think, Gifford, that the doctor was not quite frank with me, to-day. I
thought it proper to ask him if my injury was at all of a serious nature,
if it might hav