days of March were bright and warm and full of the promise
of spring. Mouse ears came out on the willows that bordered the
river, and a bunch of them was proudly carried to Libby Anne by Jimmy
Watson, who declared that he had heard a meadowlark. One evening,
too, as she lay in her tent, Libby Anne had heard the honking of wild
geese going north, and the bright March sun that came through the
canvas each day cheered her wonderfully. Libby Anne always believed
that Bud would come home in the spring--he would surely come to see
the big brown tumbling flood go down the Souris valley. Nobody could
stay away from home in the spring, when the hens are cackling in the
sun-shiny yard, and water trickling down the furrows, and every day
may be the day the first crocus comes. Bud would surely come then,
and she would get all better, and she and her mother would go to
Grandma's, and so Libby Anne beguiled her days and nights with
pleasing fancies as she waited for the spring.

But although the snow had left the fields in black patches and the
sun was bright and warm, the anemones delayed their coming and the
ice remained solid and tight in the Souris.

One day, instead of the dazzling sunshine, there were lead-gray
clouds, and a whistling wind came down the valley, piercing cold,
carrying with it sharp little hurrying snowflakes.

Up to this time Libby Anne had made good progress, but with the
change in the weather came a change in her. Almost without warning
she developed pleurisy.

The doctor's face was white with pain when he told her mother the
meaning of the flushed cheeks and laboured breathing. She had been
doing so well, too, and seemed in a fair way to win against the
relentless foe, but now, restlessly tossing on her pillow, with a
deadly catch in her breathing, what chance had such a frail little
spar of weathering the angry billows?

When the doctor went back to his office he saw Sandy Braden passing
and called him in. He told him of the new danger that threatened
Libby Anne.

"What can we do, Clay?" he cried, when the doctor had finished. "Is
there anyone that can give her a better chance than you? How about
that Scotch doctor, MacTavish? Isn't he pretty good? Can't we get
him?"

"He's too busy, I'm afraid. I don't think he ever leaves the city,"
Dr. Clay replied. "He's the best I know, if we could only get
him--though perhaps we will not need him. I'll watch the case, and if
there is any chance of an operat