. Stick after stick had
been thrown on the fire; the logs had flamed and crackled in sympathy
with their own joyous feelings, and had then fallen into piled-up coals,
each heap a castle of delight, rosy in the glow of freshly enkindled
hopes.

And the song in her heart never ceased. Day by day a fresh note was
added; everything she touched; everything she saw was transformed.
The old tumble-down house with its propped-up furniture and makeshift
carpets seemed to have become already the place she planned it to be.
There would be vines over the door and a new summer kitchen at the
back'; and there would be a porch where her mother could sit, flowers
all about her--her dear mother, bent no longer, but fresh and rosy in
her new clothes, smiling at her as she came up the garden path.

And what delight it was just to breathe the air! Never had her step been
so light, or her daily walk to the dingy office--dingy no longer--so
bracing. And the out-of-doors--the sky and drifting clouds; the low
hills, bleak in the winter's gloom--what changes had come over them? Was
it the first blush of the coming spring that had softened their lines,
or had her eyes been blind to all their beauty? Oh! Marvellous elixir
that makes hopes certainty and gilds each cloud!

*****

One morning a man waiting for a letter from an absent son heard
the telephone ring, and saw Abbie drop her letters and catch up the
receiver:

"Yes, I'm Miss Todd.--Oh! Mr. Keep? Yes.--Yes--I've got it here." Her
face grew deathly white. "What! Selling at twelve!" The man feared she
was about to fall. "I thought you told me... A big slump! Well, I don't
want to lose if... Yes, I'll mail it right away... Reach you by the 9.10
to-morrow."

"I hope you ain't got any bad news, have you?" the man asked in a
sympathetic voice.

"No," she answered in a choking voice, as she handed him his letter;
then she turned her back and took the certificate from her bosom.

"Selling at twelve," she kept saying to herself; "perhaps at ten;
perhaps at five. Would it go lower? Suppose it went down to nothing.
What could she say to her mother? How would she pay Mr. Taylor?"
Her breath came short; a dull sense of some impending calamity took
possession of her. Everything seemed slipping from her grasp.

An hour passed--two. In the interim she had indorsed the certificate
and had dropped it into the open mouth of the night-bag. Again the bell
sounded.

"Yes," she answered in a faint