ottonville; his face
kept the boarders quiet at table and in the house, anyhow. Shade
Buckheath never entered the place after Deanie was carried in from the
hastily summoned carriage Thursday night.

The doctors told them that if Deanie survived the shock and its violent
reaction, she had a fair chance of recovery. They found at once that she
was not internally injured; the blood that had been seen came only from
a cut lip. But the child's left arm was broken, the small body was
dreadfully bruised, and the terror had left a profound mental
disturbance. Nothing but quiet and careful nursing offered any good
hope; while there was the menace that she would never be strong again,
and might not live to womanhood.

At first she lay with half-closed, glazed eyes, barely breathing, a
ghastly sight. Then, when she roused a bit, she wanted, not Lissy, not
even Johnnie; she called for her mother.

When her child was brought home to her, dying as they all thought,
Laurella had rallied her forces and got up from the pallet on which she
lay to tend on the little thing; but she broke down in the course of a
few hours, and seemed about to add another patient to Johnnie's cares.

Yet when the paroxysms of terror shook the emaciated frame, and the
others attempted to reassure Deanie by words, it was her mother who
called for a bit of gay calico, for scissors and needle and thread, and
began dressing a doll in the little sufferer's sight. Laurella had
carried unspoiled the faculty for play, up with her through the years.

"Let her be," the doctor counselled Johnnie, in reply to anxious
inquiries. "Don't you see she's getting the child's attention? The baby
notices. An ounce of happiness is worth a pound of any medicine I
could bring."

And so, when Laurella could no longer sit up, they brought another cot
for her, and she lay all day babbling childish nonsense, and playing
dolls within hand-reach of the sick-bed; while Johnnie with Lissy's
help, tended on them both.

"You've got two babies now, you big, old, solemn Johnnie," Laurella
said, with a ghost of her sparkling smile. "Deanie and me is just of one
age, and that's a fact."

If Pap wanted to see his young wife--and thirst for a sight of her was a
continual craving with him; she was the light of the old sinner's
eyes--he had to go in and look on the child he had injured. This kept
him away pretty effectually after that first fiery scene, when Laurella
had flown at him like