you to go on night-duty. Doctor is going
his evening rounds."

Only half-awakened, the horror of her dream still holding her, Sister
Marion pushed the nurse away from her, threw herself from her bed, and
flew along the corridor. From the door of the private ward the doctor
was issuing; he stared at her wild, white look, her tumbled, uncovered
hair. She seized him by the arm. "Doctor!" she sobbed. "The man in
there has been cruel to me, but I want to nurse him--I want to save
him! Never, never could I have done him any harm!"

"Why should you have done him any harm?" the doctor asked, soothingly.
"Who would have harmed the poor fellow? Come and see."

He softly opened the door of the private ward, and with his hand upon
her arm, led her in.

The matron and one of the nurses stood on either side of the bed, from
which the scarlet blanket had been removed. The long white sheet which
had replaced it was pulled up over the face of the recumbent form.

"He died an hour ago in his sleep," the matron said. "He did not regain
consciousness after you left him. I have been with him all the time."

Sister Marion, with dazed eyes, looked down upon her hands--slowly,
from one to the other. Clean, clean, thank Heaven! Looked at her
spotless apron, at the sheet showing the sharp outline of the figure on
the bed.

"Was there, upon his breast, a little ivory-handled penknife?" she
asked.

But before they had told her, wonderingly, no, she had fallen on her
knees beside the quiet figure and was sobbing to herself a prayer of
thanksgiving.

"A sensitive, imaginative woman--she has been wakened too suddenly,"
the doctor said.

His gaze dwelt lingering upon her bent, dark head as slowly he turned
away.

DORA OF THE RINGOLETS

"I wish I c'd du my ringolets same as yu kin, mother. When I carl 'em
over my fingers they don't hang o' this here fashion down my back, but
go all of a womble-like; not half s' pretty."

"Tha's 'cause ye twist 'em wrong way, back'ards round yer fingers," the
faint voice from the bed made answer. "Yu ha' got to larn to du 'em,
Dora, don't, yer'll miss me cruel when I'm gone."

The dying woman was propped on a couple of pillows of more or less
soiled appearance; these were raised to the required height by means of
a folded flannel petticoat and dingy woollen frock, worn through all
the twelve years of her married life, but now to be worn no more. On
the man's coat, spread for extra warmth over