once. It may be two hours, before he can get here. He told me to
keep up the stimulant."

"You have used it?"

"Once, while you were talking to Mrs. Brenton. It is nearly time,
again."

"Did it----" Brenton's voice failed him utterly.

The nurse hedged.

"It is too soon yet to know. The second dose ought to show more."

But the second dose did not show, nor yet the third. After the fourth
one, the nurse looked up.

"Can you telephone to Mrs. Brenton?" she asked.

"You think?"

"That she should be here. Can you get her?"

And then Brenton was forced to confess the truth. The nurse accepted
the truth as mercifully as she was able.

"Poor little woman!" she said. "Isn't it wonderful the hold the thing
gets--"

Her question was never ended. Instead, she laid her hand on Brenton's
sleeve.

"Look!" she whispered.

All at once, the doze had ended. With its ending, all look of tiredness
and suffering had gone away out of the baby face. Instead, the little
eyes were eager; the little lips were breaking into a smile of utter
joyousness; the little arms were up-stretched strongly, the hands wide
open and shaking in happy recognition.

"Nurse!" Then Brenton steadied himself with a mighty effort, and bent
forward to hold out his arms. "Daddy take boy?" he urged gently, in his
accustomed phrase.

There came an instantaneous check upon the baby's eagerness. The head
turned, while the eyes met Brenton's without a spark of response. Then
once again the little arms shot upward above the brightening face where
the eager look of recognition was changing fast to a happiness
ineffable, to a glad surety that the vision opened to the baby eyes
alone was far beyond the dreams which mortal mind could fashion.

Then the little arms dropped backward; but the ineffable happiness
remained.

Gently, very gently, Scott Brenton folded the baby hands across the
muslin nightie, and smoothed the ruffled baby hair above the waxy brow.
Then, half unconsciously,--

"For Thine is the Kingdom," he said.

And then, a little later on, he wondered why he had said it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

The opening of the second semester of the college year found Instructor
Brenton busy with his classes.

Conservative old Saint Peter's had taken the upheaval badly, not so
much the theoretic questions at stake regarding the soundness of their
rector's doctrine, as the loss of their rector himself. The older
members of the congregation l