nald for the doctor.

She sent Olive for the children's nurse and took counsel with her as to
getting her mistress back to bed. But Nurse instantly discouraged this
suggestion.

"For the Lord's sake, ma'am, don't take her upstairs!" she said. "The
master's up there with Miss Gracie, and he's whipping the poor lamb
something cruel. He made me undress her first."

"Oh, I cannot have that!" exclaimed Avery. "Stay here a minute, Nurse,
while I go up!"

She rushed upstairs in furious anger to the room in which the three
little girls slept. The door was locked, but the sounds within were
unmistakable. Gracie was plainly receiving severe punishment from her
irate parent. Her agonized crying tore Avery's heart.

She threw herself at the door and battered at it with her fists. "Mr.
Lorimer!" she called. "Mr. Lorimer, let me in!"

There was no response. Possibly she was not even heard, for the dreadful
crying continued and, mingled with it, the swish of the slender little
riding-switch which in the earlier, less harassed days of his married
life the Reverend Stephen had kept for the horse he rode, and which now
he kept for his children.

They were terrible moments for Avery that she spent outside that locked
door, listening impotently to a child's piteous cries for mercy from one
who knew it not. But they came to an end at last. Gracie's distress sank
into anguished sobs, and Avery knew that the punishment was over. Mr.
Lorimer had satisfied both his sense of duty and his malice.

She heard him speak in cold, cutting tones. "I have punished you more
severely than I had ever expected to find necessary, and I hope that the
lesson will be sufficient. But I warn you, Grace, most solemnly that I
shall watch your behaviour very closely for the future, and if I detect
in you the smallest indication of the insolence and defiance for which I
have inflicted this punishment upon you to-day I shall repeat the
punishment fourfold. No! Not another word!" as Gracie made some
inarticulate utterance. "Or you will compel me to repeat it to-night!"

And with that, he walked quietly to the door and unlocked it.

Avery had ceased to beat upon it; she met him white and stiff in
the doorway.

"I have just sent for the doctor," she said. "Mrs. Lorimer has been
taken ill."

She passed him at once with the words, not looking at him, for she could
not trust herself. Straight to Gracie, huddled on the floor in her
night-dress, she went, and l