t sputter and spark it lights up and turns the attic
inside out--and there we are, the little boy and I, hand in hand, running
straight for the brook back of the house. The lamp burns as bright as the
sun now, so it seems like day--a spring day. It isn't the mice squealing
at all that you hear, but the birds singing and the brook running. There
are cowslips down by the brook, and 'Jacks.' Here by the big stone is a
chance to build a bully good dam and sailboats made out of the shingles
blown off from the barn roof. Want to stop and build it now?"

"All right." There was almost a suppressed laugh in the voice; it
certainly sounded glad. And the hand on the coverlid was as relaxed as
that of a child being led somewhere it wants to go.

Sheila smiled happily in the dark: "You must get stones, then--lots and
lots of them--and we'll pile them together. There's one stone--and two
stones--and three stones. Another stone here--another here--another
here--a big one there where the current runs swiftest, and little stones
for the chinks."

According to Sheila O'Leary's best reckoning the dam was only half built
when the little boy fell fast asleep over his work. And when the gray of
the morning stole down the corridors of the Surgical, No. 3 was sleeping,
with one arm thrown over his head as little boys sleep, and the other
holding fast to the nurse on night duty.

But it takes a long while to break down an old habit and build up a new
one, as it takes a long while to build a dam. No less than tons of stones
must have gone to the building of Peter's before the time came when he
could drop asleep alone and unguided. In all that time neither he nor the
girl ever spoke of what lay between the putting out of the night lamp and
the waking fresh and rested to a welcomed day.

With sleep came speedy recovery, and Peter was the most popular
convalescent in the Surgical. His laugh had suddenly grown contagious, his
humor irresistible, his outlook on life so optimistically bubbling that
less cheery patients turned their wheel-chairs to No. 3 for revitalizing.
The chief came up with Doctor Dempsy from town, and both went away wearing
the look of men who have seen miracles. Life in its fullness had come to
Peter, the life he had dreamed of, as a lost crosser of the desert dreams
of water. Efficient work was to be his again, and companionship, and--yes,
for the first time he hoped for the third and best of life's
ingredients--he hoped for