y as a Madonna--out into the sunshine, and, as she sat
holding Mary Isabel in her arms, she gathered to herself an ecstasy
of relief, a joy of life which atoned, in part, for the inescapable
sufferings of maternity.]

He saved both mother and child, and when the nurse laid in my arms a
little babe, who looked up at me with grave, accusing blue eyes,--the
eyes of her mother,--I wondered whether society had a right to put any
woman to this cruel test--whether the race was worth maintaining at such
a price.

Our loyal friend, Mary Easton (mother of five children), who was present
to help us through our stern trial, assured me that maternity had its
joys as well as its agonies, and after she had peered into the face of
my small daughter she remarked to me with a delightful note of
admiration, "Why, she is already a _person_!"

So indeed she was. Her head, large and shapely and her eyes wide, dark
and curiously reflective, were like her mother's. True, she hadn't much
nose, but her hair was abundant and her fingers exquisite. She lay in my
big paws with what seemed to me to be tranquil confidence, and though
her legs were comically rudimentary, her glance manifested an
unassailable dignity. My father insisted she resembled her grandmother.

* * * * *

At last came the blessed day when the nurse permitted me to wheel the
convalescent out upon the porch. The morning was lovely, with just a
hint of autumn in its coolness, and to Zulime it was heavenly sweet, for
it seemed that she had emerged from a long dark night of agony and
doubt.

As she sat with the babe in her lap looking over the familiar hills, she
was more beautiful than she had ever been before. She was a being
glorified.

Later in the day, as the sun was going down in a welter of gold and
crimson, she came out again and in its splendor I chose to read the
promise of a noble future for Mary Isabel. It gave me joy to know that
she had taken up her life beneath the same roof and almost in the same
room in which Isabel Garland had laid her burden down.

Yes, the Homestead had a new claimant. In the midst of my father's
decaying world a new and vigorous life had miraculously appeared.
Beneath the moldering leaves of the leaning oaks a tender yet tenacious
shoot was springing from the soil.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Mary Isabel's Chimney

No one who reads the lives of writers attentively can fail of perceiving
the periods of de