ve? Can't
you feel how he would lie and listen to all the sounds about him--the
squealing mice, the creaking rafters, the wind moaning in the eaves--too
terrified to go to sleep? And when he did sleep--worn out--can't you
imagine what his dreams would be like? Oh, women like that--women who
could frighten little sensitive children--ought to be burned as they
burned the witches!" The girl's eyes blazed and she shook a pair of
clenched fists into the air. "And can you see the rest of it? How the fear
grew and grew even as the memory of the tales faded, grew into a nameless,
unexplainable fear of sleep? And because he was a boy he hid it; and
because he was a man he fought it; but the thing nailed him at last. He
fought sleep until he lost the habit of sleep. He couldn't get along
without it, and here he is!"

"Well, what are you going to do?" The superintendent eyed her narrowly;
her cheeks were as flushed as the girl's.

A little enigmatical smile curved up the corners of the usually demure
mouth. "Going to play Leerie--going to play it harder than I ever did in
my life before."

And that night as Peter turned his head wearily toward the door to greet
the kindly, cumbersome Saunders, he found, to his surprise, the owner of
the shining eyes come back. He felt so ridiculously glad about it that he
couldn't even trust himself to tell her so. Instead he repeated foolishly
the same old thing, "Why, it's--it's Leerie!"

When everything was ready for the night, Sheila turned the night-light out
and lowered the curtain until it was quite dark. Then she drew her chair
close to the bed and slipped her hand into the lean, clenched one on the
coverlid. "Don't think of me as a girl--a nurse--a person--at all,
to-night," she said, softly. "I'm just a piece of Stevenson's poem come to
life--a lamplighter for a little boy going to sleep all alone in a
farm-house attic. It's very dark. You can hear the mice squeal and the
rafters creak, if you listen, and the window's so small the stars can't
creep in. In the daytime the attic doesn't seem far away or very strange,
but at night it's miles--miles away from the rest of the house, and it's
full of things that may happen. That's why I'm here with my lamp."

Sheila stopped a moment. She could hear the man's breath coming quick,
with a catch in it--a child breathes that way when it is fighting down a
cry or a sob. Then she went on: "Of course it's a magical lamp I carry,
and with the firs