ia stood helpless.

"Her name is Livingstone," called Hilda from the bed, "and she is as
good as she is beautiful. You needn't be troubled about _her_ soul--she
takes Communion every Sunday morning at the Cathedral."

"Hallelujah!" said Captain Filbert, in a tone of dubious congratulation.

"Much better," said Hilda, cheerfully, "to take it at the Cathedral, you
know, than nowhere."

Miss Filbert said nothing to this, but sat down upon the edge of the
bed, looking serious, and stroked Hilda's hair.

"You don't seem to have much fever," she said. "There was a poor fellow
in the Military Hospital this morning with a temperature of 107. I could
hardly bear to touch him."

"What was the matter?" asked Hilda idly, occupied with hypotheses about
the third person in the room.

"Oh, I don't know exactly. Some complication, I suppose, of the wages
the body pays to sin."

"Divinest Laura!" Hilda exclaimed, drawing her head back. "Do take a
chair. It will be even more soothing to see you comfortable."

Captain Filbert spoke again to Alicia, as she obeyed. "Miss Howe is more
thoughtful for others than some of our converted ones," she said, with
vast kindness. "I have often told her so. I have had a long day."

"It may improve me in that character," Hilda said, "to suggest that if
you will go about such people, a little carbolic disinfectant is a good
thing, or a crystal or two of permanganate of potash in your bath. Do
you use those things?"

Laura shook her head. "Faith is better than disinfectants. I never get
any harm. My Master protects me."

"My goodness!" Hilda said. And in the silence that occurred, Captain
Filbert remarked that the only thing she used carbolic acid for was a
decayed tooth. Presently Alicia made a great effort. She laid hands on
Hilda's previous references as a tangibility that remained with her.

"Do you ever go to the Cathedral?" she said.

The faintest shade of dogmatism crossed Captain Filbert's features, as
when, on a day of cloud fleeces, the sun withdraws for an instant from a
flower. Since her sect is proclaimed beyond the boundaries of dogma it
may have been some other obscurity, but my appraisement fails.

"No, I never go there. We raise our own Ebenezer; we are a tabernacle to
ourselves."

"Isn't it exquisite--her way of speaking!" cried Hilda from the bed, and
Laura glanced at her with a deprecating, reproachful smile, in reproof
of an offence admittedly incorrigible. But she w