nd I should think it
would be only the friend's hand and the friend's eyes, just the human
sympathy, which would make it easier. I suppose all one can do is to say,
'Let my friendship go with you through it all,--all this unknown to us
both.'"

Dr. Howe turned and looked at her sharply; the twilight had fallen, and
the carriage was very dark. "That's a heathenish thing to say, Helen, and
it is not so. The consolations of religion belong to a man in death as
much as in life; they ought not to belong more to death than to life, but
they do, sometimes. It isn't that there is not much to say to Denner. It
is the--the unusualness of it, if I can so express it. We have never
touched on such things, I tell you, old friends as we are; and it is
awkward, you understand."

They were very quiet for the rest of the long drive. They stopped a
moment at Mr. Denner's gate; the house was dark, except for a dim light
in the library and another in the kitchen, where Mary sat poring over her
usual volume. Gifford came out to say there was no change, and opened the
carriage door to shake hands with Helen.

"He would have prayers to-night," he said to the rector, still talking in
a hushed voice, as though the spell of the sick-room were on him out
under the stars, in the shadows of the poplar-trees. "He made Willie read
them aloud to Mary, he told me; he said it was proper to observe such
forms in a family, no matter what the conditions might be. Imagine Willie
stumbling through Chronicles, and Mary fast asleep at her end of that big
dark dining-room!"

Gifford smiled, but the rector was too much distressed to be amused; he
shivered as they drove away.

"Ah," he said sharply, "how I hate that slam of a carriage door! Makes me
think of but one thing. Yes, I must see him to-morrow. I must tell him
to-morrow."

The rector settled back in his corner, his face darkening with a grieved
and troubled frown, and they did not speak until they reached the rectory
gate. As it swung heavily back against the group of white lilacs behind
it, shaking out their soft, penetrating fragrance into the night air,
some one sprang towards the carriage, and almost before it stopped stood
on the steps, and rapped with impatient joy at the window.

It was Lois. She had thrown a filmy white scarf about her head, and had
come out to walk up and down the driveway, and listen for the sound of
wheels. She had not wanted to stay in the house, lest Mr. Forsythe migh