any days designing dainty gowns and hoods for her delight. She could
hardly be separated from the child, even for a night and it was in her
battles with croup and other nocturnal enemies that her maternal love
was tested to the full. I do not assume to know what she felt as a wife,
but of her devotion as a mother I am able to write with certainty. On
her fell the burden of those hours of sickness in the city, and when the
time came for us to go back to the birds and trees of our beloved valley
she rejoiced as openly as her daughter. "Now we shall be free of colds
and fever," she said.

[Illustration: Entirely subject to my daughter, who regarded me as a
wonder-working giant, I paid tribute to her in song, in story, and in
frankincense and myrrh. Led by her trusting little hand I re-
discovered the haunts of fairies and explored once more the land
beneath the rainbow.]

For the most part this was true. For several summers our daughter lived
and throve at her birthplace, free of pain and in idyllic security--and
then suddenly, one September day, like the chill shadow from an Autumn
stormcloud, misfortune fell upon us. Our daughter became sick, how sick
I did not realize until on the eighth day as I took her in my arms I
discovered in her a horrifying weakness. Her little body, thinned with
fever, hung so laxly, so lightly on my knee that my blood chilled with
sudden terror.

With a conviction that I dared not even admit to myself, I put her back
into her mother's keeping and hurried to the telephone. In ten minutes I
had called to her aid the best medical men of the region. Especially did
I appeal to Doctor Evans, who had helped to bring her into the world.
"You must come," I said to him. "It is life or death."

He came, swiftly, but in a few moments after his arrival he gravely
announced the dreadful truth. "Your child is in the last stages of
diphtheria. I will do what I can for her but she should have had the
antitoxin five days ago."

For forty-eight hours our baby's life was despaired of, yet fought for
by a heroic nurse who refused to leave her for a single hour.

Oh, the suspense, the agony of those days and nights, when her mother
and I, helpless to serve, were shut away from her, not even permitted to
look at her. We could do nothing--nothing but wait through the
interminable hours, tortured by the thought that she might be calling
for us. During one entire dreadful night we writhed under one doctor's
sent