uld not finish that prayer, that day. But her heart
was full of thanksgiving and gratitude, and the Madonna had a better
prayer than any in the book.

The sun was up, and the canaries, finches, and linnets had made the
veranda ring with joyous racket, before Felipe opened his eyes. The
Senora had come and gone and come again, looking at him anxiously, but
he stirred not. Ramona had stolen timidly out, glancing at Alessandro
only long enough to give him one quick smile, and bent over Felipe's
bed, holding her breath, he lay so still.

"Ought he to sleep so long?" she whispered.

"Till the noon, it may be," answered Alessandro; "and when he wakes, you
will see by his eye that he is another man."

It was indeed so. When Felipe first looked about him, he laughed
outright with pure pleasure. Then catching sight of Alessandro at the
steps, he called, in a stronger voice than had yet been heard from him,
"Alessandro, you are a famous physician. Why couldn't that fool from
Ventura have known as much? With all his learning, he had had me in the
next world before many days, except for you. Now, Alessandro, breakfast!
I'm hungry. I had forgotten what the thought of food was like to a
hungry stomach. And plenty! plenty!" he called, as Alessandro ran toward
the kitchen. "Bring all they have."

When the Senora saw Felipe bolstered up in the bed, his eye bright,
his color good, his voice clear, eating heartily like his old self,
she stood like a statue in the middle of the veranda for a moment; then
turning to Alessandro, she said chokingly, "May Heaven reward you!" and
disappeared abruptly in her own room. When she came out, her eyes
were red. All day she moved and spoke with a softness unwonted, indeed
inconceivable. She even spoke kindly and without constraint to Ramona.
She felt like one brought back from the dead.

After this, a new sort of life began for them all. Felipe's bed on
the veranda was the rallying point for everything and everybody.. The
servants came to look up at him, and wish him well, from the garden-walk
below. Juan Can, when he first hobbled out on the stout crutches
Alessandro had made him of manzanita wood, dragged himself all the way
round the house, to have a look at Senor Felipe and a word with him. The
Senora sat there, in the big carved chair, looking like a sibyl with her
black silk banded head-dress severely straight across her brow, and her
large dark eyes gazing out, past Felipe, into the far so