ave replied that she would go up to his room and lock
herself into it, so that no one should disturb her for a time. And
this he discovered, on returning home, was actually what had happened.
How well he knew her! How distinctly he heard every beat of her tender
heart, and how easy to him to tell why it was beating! He did not go
up; he waited for little Elspeth to come to him, all in her own good
time. And when she came, looking just as he knew she would look, he
had a brave, bright face for her.

She was shaking after her excitement, or perhaps she had ceased to
shake and begun again as she came down to him. He pretended not to
notice it; he would notice it the moment he was sure she wanted him
to, but perhaps that would not be until she was in bed and he had come
to say good-night and put out her light, for, as we know, she often
kept her great confidences till then, when she discovered that he
already knew them.

"The doctor has been in."

She began almost at once, and in a quaking voice and from a distance,
as if in hope that the bullet might be spent before it reached her
brother.

"I am sorry I missed him," he replied cautiously. "What a fine fellow
he is!"

"You always liked him," said Elspeth, clinging eagerly to that.

"No one could help liking him, Elspeth, he has such winning ways,"
said Tommy, perhaps a little in the voice with which at funerals we
refer to the departed. She loved his words, but she knew she had a
surprise for him this time, and she tried to blurt it out.

"He said something to me. He--oh, what a high opinion he has of you!"
(She really thought he had.)

"Was that the something?" Tommy asked, with a smile that helped her,
as it was meant to do.

"You understand, don't you?" she said, almost in a whisper.

"Of course I do, Elspeth," he answered reassuringly; but somehow she
still thought he didn't.

"No one could have been more manly and gentle and humble," she said
beseechingly.

"I am sure of it," said Tommy.

"He thinks nothing of himself," she said.

"We shall always think a great deal of him," replied Tommy.

"Yes, but----" Elspeth found the strangest difficulty in continuing,
for, though it would have surprised him to be told so, Tommy was not
helping her nearly as much as he imagined.

"I told him," she said, shaking, "that no one could be to me what you
were. I told him----" and then timid Elspeth altogether broke down.
Tommy drew her to him, as he had so often