d and laid it on the girl's arm. "I
wish my boy and you were acquainted, dear," she said wistfully. And
Hazel, the rich colour flooding her face at once, replied hesitatingly:

"Oh, why--I--feel--almost--as--though--we _were_!" Then she kissed her
friend on the soft cheek and hurried back to the inn.

It was that night that the telegram came to say that her father had been
seriously injured in a railway accident and would be brought home at
once. She had no time to think of anything then but to hurry her
belongings together and hasten to New York.

XII

QUALIFYING FOR SERVICE

During the six weeks' lingering suffering that followed the accident
Hazel was never far from her father's bedside. It seemed as though a new
bond of understanding had come between them.

He was very low and there was little hope from the beginning. As he grew
weaker he seemed never to want his daughter out of sight, and once when
he woke suddenly to find her close beside him, a smile of relief spread
over his face, and he told her in brief words that he had dreamed she
was lost again in Arizona, and that he had been searching for her with
the wild beasts howling all about and wicked men prowling in dark caves.
He told her how during that awful time of her disappearance he had been
haunted by her face as she was a tiny baby after her mother died, and it
seemed to him he should go mad if he could not find her at once.

Then to soothe him she told him of the missionary, and how gently he
had cared for her; told him of all the pleasant little details of the
way, though not, of course, of his love for her nor hers for him.
Perhaps the father, with eyes keen from their nearness to the other
world, discerned something of her interest as she talked, for once he
sighed and said, in reference to the life of sacrifice the missionary
was leading: "Well, I don't know but such things are more worth while
after all."

And then with sudden impulse she told him of her finding his mother, and
why she had wanted to go to the country in the middle of the society
season, because she wanted to know more of the peaceful life this woman
lived.

"Perhaps you will meet him again. Who knows?" said the father, looking
wistfully at his lovely daughter, and then he turned his head away and
sighed again.

As the confidence grew between them she told him one day of Milton
Hamar's unwelcome proposal, and the indignation of the father knew no
bounds.

It wa