her hand, presently laid it gently down, thinking that
she had gone to sleep, and, stepping softly to a chair by the window, sat
down to wait for her to wake and speak again.

Over in the park the children were playing gaily; the elder folk were
already seated on the seats with books or newspaper, or sewing.
How familiar it all was, how dear! Minute after minute passed, while
Audrey, with her eyes fixed on the distant hills, turned over and over in
her mind those last words her grandmother had spoken. How they rang in
her ears, as warning bells! By and by the nurse came in.

"Granny is having such a lovely sleep," said Audrey happily. But the
nurse, already at the bedside, did not return her smile. Her eyes were on
the face on the pillow, her hand on the frail hand lying where Audrey had
laid it down.

"She is," she said at last, very softly--"She was. She has had such a
beautiful wakening, dear. She has passed through the Valley of Shadows,
and is safe on the other side."

CHAPTER XVI.

A year had passed since Granny Carlyle went to her rest and Audrey
returned to the Vicarage to take up her duties there again.

Another summer has come and gone, for it is September now, but a September
so warm and sunny and beautiful that, if it were not for the changing
tints on the trees, one might well imagine it was still June.

In the Vicarage garden the 'herb bed' had developed into a handsome
herbaceous border, varied by patches here and there of feathery parsley,
a bush of sage, a clump of lemon-thyme, and mint. Job Toms had retired
again to his kitchen-garden, for "he didn't hold with messing up flowers
and herbs together, and nothing wasn't going to make him believe but what
planting poppies next to parsley was bad for the parsley. Poppies was
p'ison, so he'd been always led to believe, and he didn't believe in
p'isonous things being planted 'mongst what folks was asked to eat."

So Audrey and Faith and the children had taken the beds in their charge,
and in aiming at showing Job what a beautiful, if not useful, thing a
herbaceous border could be, they had laboured hard, and were now reaping
their reward.

Occasionally, as a great favour, the old man could be coaxed into cutting
the grass--as to-day, for instance, which was a great day in the family
history, for it was Mrs. Carlyle's birthday; and not only that, but she
was to go to the Mill House to tea. Her first real 'outing' for two long
years a