lds. She was not twenty-six years of age, and to have
learned the truth at twenty-six, and still not to have been wholly
destroyed by the lies of life, was something which might be turned to
good account.

She was sharply roused, almost shocked out of her distraction. Bright
lights appeared suddenly in front of her, and she heard the voice of
her Corporal saying: "We're here, ma'am, where old Brinkwort built a
hospital for one, and that one's yours, Mrs. Byng."

He clucked to his horses and they slackened. All at once the lights
seemed to grow larger, and from the garden of Brinkwort's house came
the sharp voice of a soldier saying:

"Halt! Who goes there?"

"A friend," was the Corporal's reply.

"Advance, friend, and give the countersign," was brusquely returned.

A moment afterwards Jasmine was in the sweet-smelling garden, and the
lights of the house were flaring out upon her.

She heard at the same time the voices of the sentry and of Corporal
Shorter in low tones of badinage, and she frowned. It was cruel that at
the door of the dead or the dying there should be such levity.

All at once a figure came between her and the light. Instinctively she
knew it was Al'mah.

"Al'mah! Al'mah!" she said painfully, and in a voice scarce above a
whisper.

The figure of the singing-woman bent over her protectingly, as it might
almost seem, and her hands were caught in a warm clasp.

"Am I in time?" Jasmine asked, and the words came from her in gasps.

Al'mah had no repentance for her deception. She saw an agitation which
seemed to her deeper and more real than any emotion ever shown by
Jasmine, not excepting the tragical night at the Glencader Mine and the
morning of the first meeting at the Stay Awhile Hospital. The butterfly
had become a thrush that sang with a heart in its throat.

She gathered Jasmine's eyes to her own. It seemed as though she never
would answer. To herself she even said, why should she hurry, since all
was well, since she had brought the two together living, who had been
dead to each other these months past, and, more than all, had been of
the angry dead? A little more pain and regret could do no harm, but
only good. Besides, now that she was face to face with the result of
her own deception, she had a sudden fear that it might go wrong. She
had no remorse for the act, but only a faint apprehension of the
possible consequences. Suppose that in the shock of discovery Jasmine
should throw ever