to carry about, Nellie," he was wont to say, "and may come useful
some day."

So Helen had gone, with good-natured indulgence of Father's whim, and
studied at a training school, with one eye on her books and the other
watching for Dick to come up the street. And when she brought home her
despised diploma, there was a diamond ring on the hand that placed it
on her father's desk. That had been a year ago. And almost
immediately after, her father had been taken from them. The old home
went next. The boys and girls scattered to earn their own living.
Mother had gone with Betty, who had married, and who lived away in the
West. And then the last and best treasure had been taken, the diamond
with its marvellous lights and colours, and with it had gone out all
the light and colour of life.

She was just twenty-three, and she had been given the task of working
out a new strange life unaided, with nothing ahead of her but work and
loneliness.

At first she had given way to a numb despair, then necessity and the
needs of the family aroused her. There was something for her to do,
something that had to be done, and back of all the wreck of her life,
dimmed by clouds of sorrow, there stood her father's God. In spite of
all the despair and dismay she felt instinctively He must be somewhere,
behind it all. She did not know as yet, that that assurance spelled
hope. But she knew that there was work for her and there was Mother
waiting until she should make her a home.

She sprang up, as her misery threatened to overwhelm her again, and
began swiftly to change her dress and arrange her hair. She pulled
back the stiff curtains of one of the tall windows and leaned out. A
soft blue haze, the first glimpse of September's tender eyes, was
settling on the distant hills. The sun was setting, and away up the
street towards the west flamed a gold and crimson sky, and away down in
the east flamed its gold and crimson reflection on the mirror of Lake
Algonquin. From the garden below, the scent of the opening nicotine
blossoms came up to her.

She was sitting there, trying to admire the beauty of it all, but her
heart protesting against the feeling of utter loneliness it bred, when
there came a sharp tap on the door. It opened the next moment and a
young lady tripped in.

"Good evening, Miss Murray. I just bounced in to say welcome to
Rosemount. I'm so glad you've come. I've just been dying to have a
girl in the house of my