is lost," she had answered quietly enough, but
with agony in her expression.

When they had gone Gerald got up and dressed. He was rather shaky in
the knees but felt far better than when lying on the hard bed which
had been given up to his use. How his hostess had managed he had not
even thought, until that moment Jim had lain on the bench across the
room, upon a bag of fern leaves he had gathered for himself in the
woods near-by, with his rag-carpet blanket to cover him. He hadn't
complained and Gerald had given no thought to his comfort, his own
being his first concern as it had always been.

Now the house seemed desolate. Saint Anne came timidly in with his
light supper and started back in affright. He looked like a stranger
to her in his own clothes, having seen him only as "the sick one" in
bed. But he called her and she dared not disobey her mother's command
to give him his supper. Somehow, for the first time, the child's face
appealed to him and he thanked her for her attention. This was more
astonishing than to see him fully dressed in his white duck suit, that
had been laundered by Lucetta on the day after his arrival.

In a flutter of excitement, Saint Anne retreated to the inner room and
the safe presence of her family; and when, after a moment she regained
courage enough to open the door between--the lad was gone.

"He was here and he isn't here. He was all in white, like mamma says
the angels wear, and Dr. Jabb's little Eunice. She had on clothes all
flyey-about and thin--looked like moonlight. She had a hump in her
shoulders where mamma thinks maybe her wings are starting to grow.
Mamma knows her mamma a right smart while, and she says Eunice is a
perfectly angelic child. Mamma wouldn't say that if she didn't know.
Maybe the sick boy's turned into a angel, too, or is turning! Just
supposing! Maybe God sent him to stay with us, because papa and mamma
had to go away. Maybe!"

There was no radiance from the moonlight now upon the eager little
face, and indoors was dark; but it was delightful to think of angels
being about, until Wesley remarked, in his matter-of-fact way:

"If he was _sent_ he ought to have _stayed_. I don't believe he was a
truly angel. I guess he was just one them changelings, papa tells
stories about, that the fairies over in the Ireland-country carries
'round with 'em. If a baby or a boy is terrible cross--like the sick
one was, yesterday, the fairy just snatches him up and whisks h