m, and was
assigned to duty, first in Montreal, and then in New York. She has
risen already to be an officer, and, I judge, a valuable one. She was
off this month on sick-leave for her brother's ship, taking a vacation
from overwork, I suspect."

"What is her work?" asked Brady, leaning forward with his square chin
propped on his hands, which, in their turn, were supported by his
knees,--an attitude to which he was prone when self-forgetful.

"Her work? Oh, I don't know! Everything I suppose. Taking care of sick
people in tenements, talking, and singing, and selling copies of the
'War Cry,' in offices and liquor-saloons."

Brady frowned. "I don't like it," he said. "She's too pretty, with
those little curly rings of hair round her pale face, and with those
big blue eyes. Why don't they send some old maid on such errands?"

"Because they want to sell their papers," answered Miss Standish,
dryly.

The talk around the fire had gone on so eagerly that the attention of
the group was utterly absorbed; and every one started as if an
apparition had appeared in their midst, when a slim figure in a dark
dress, against which her face looked doubly white, glided noiselessly
into the room. With eyes fixed in almost trance-like far-sightedness,
she moved towards Brady, and laid her hand upon his sleeve.

"My brother," she said, "it is you have risked your life to save mine.
God gave you back both. What will you be doing with your share?"

"I--I--I'm awfully sorry, don't you know!" stammered Brady, terribly
embarrassed; "but it wasn't I who did it."

"Here is the man, Miss Costello, to whom you owe your life," said the
Doctor, who dearly loved a "situation," turning as he spoke, with a
little flourish, to the place where Flint had stood; but that
gentleman had taken advantage of the mistake to bolt into the bed-room
behind him. He would have bolted into the pond, rather than submit to
be thanked publicly in this fashion.

"He's gone!" exclaimed Dr. Cricket, in disappointment.

"Ah!" said Nora Costello, with a quick, sympathetic smile, "it's verra
natural. He did not wish to be thanked. Perhaps he is right. After
all, it is to the good God himsel' that our thanks are owing."

She knelt on the rug, as simply as she would have taken an offered
chair, and spoke to some invisible presence, as naturally as she would
have spoken to any of those in the room. Brady was shocked at first,
at the conversational tone. It was so realis