emed that a keen sensitiveness came with it,
and a feeling of impending calamity.

"Oh, it's the cursed whiskey," he said to himself--"it always leaves
you keyed up like a fiddle or a woman. I'll get over it after a while
or I'll die trying," and he closed his teeth upon each other with a
nervous twist that belied his efforts at calmness.

But even Lily grew alarmed, and to quiet her he took her into the
house and they ate their supper in silence.

Again he came out on the porch and sat with the little girl in his
lap. But Lily gave him no rest, for she kept saying, as the hours
passed: "Where is she, father--oh, do go and see!"

"She has gone to Millwood through mistake," he kept telling her, "and
Mammy Maria has doubtless gone after her. Mammy will bring her back.
We will wait awhile longer--if I had some one to leave you with," he
said gently, "I'd go myself. But she will be home directly."

And Lily went to sleep in his lap, waiting.

The moon came up, and Conway wrapped Lily in a shawl, but still held
her in his arms. And as he sat holding her and waiting with a
fast-beating heart for the old nurse, all his wasted life passed
before him.

He saw himself as he had not for years--his life a failure, his
fortune gone. He wondered how he had escaped as he had, and as he
thought of the old Bishop's words, he wondered why God had been as
good to him as He had, and again he uttered a silent prayer of
thankfulness and for strength. And with it the strength came, and he
knew he could never more be the drunkard he had been. There was
something in him stronger than himself.

He was a strong man spiritually--it had been his inheritance, and the
very thought of anything happening to Helen blanched his cheek. In
spite of the faults of his past, no man loved his children more than
he, when he was himself. Like all keen, sensitive natures, his was
filled to overflowing with paternal love.

"My God," he thought, "suppose--suppose she has gone back to
Millwood, found none of us there, thinks she had been deserted,
and--and--"

The thought was unbearable. He slipped in with the sleeping Lily in
his arms and began to put her in bed without awakening her,
determined to mount his horse and go for Helen himself.

But just then the old nurse, frantic, breathless and in a delirium of
religious excitement, came in and fell fainting on the porch.

He revived her with cold water, and when she could talk she could
only pronounc