stir when they laid her
in the white swan bed, they stole softly away and left her in the grip
of the demon Despair.

So this was what the Lilac Lady had meant when she had said so bitterly,
"You will turn your face to the wall, say good-bye to those who you
thought were your friends, build a high fence around you and
hide--_hide_ from the world and everything!" The words came back to her
with a startling distinctness and a great sob rose in her throat.

"What is it, darling?" asked a gentle voice from the darkness, and
Peace, clutching wildly for some human support in her hour of anguish,
threw her arms about the figure kneeling at her bedside, and cried in
terror, "O, Grandma, I _can't_, I _can't_!"

"Can't what?" asked the sweet voice, thinking the child was a victim of
some bad dream, for she never suspected that Peace could know the
dreadful truth.

"I _can't_ stay here all the rest of my life! I wasn't made for the bed.
My feet _won't_ keep still. I _must_ run and shout. O, Grandma, tell me
it isn't true!"

But the gentle voice was silent, and the woman's tears mingling with
those of the grief-stricken child told the story. Clasping the quivering
little body more tightly in her arms, the silvery-haired grandmother
sobbed without restraint until the child's grief was spent, and from
sheer exhaustion Peace fell asleep.

Then, loosing the grip of the slender hands, now grown so thin and
white, she laid her burden back on the bed, and as she kissed the wet
cheeks and left the weary slumberer to her troubled dreams, she
whispered sadly, "Good-night, little Peace,--and good-bye. We have lost
our merry little sprite. It will be a different Peace who wakens with
the morrow."

CHAPTER V

THE LILAC LADY'S MESSAGE

Mercifully, Peace slept long the next morning, and it was not until the
sun was high in the sky that she opened her eyes to her surroundings.
Then it was with a heavy sense of something wrong, and she stared
uneasily about her, trying to remember what was the trouble.

"I feel as if I'd done something bad," she said half aloud, "but I can't
think of a thing."

The sound of Allee's footsteps creeping softly along the hall and a
glimpse of an awed, tear-stained face peering at her from the doorway
suddenly recalled to her mind the scene of yesterday, and the bitter
truth rushed over her with agonizing keenness. She could never walk
again! All her days must be spent in a wheel-chair, a helpless