only do as I ask."

"Then I shall have to make a pallet on the floor, for Miss Elise gave
positive orders that I should sleep in your room until she came back.
Don't you mean to undress yourself?"

"No. Please unfasten my clothes and then leave them as they are. You
must not sleep on the floor. Roll in the hall sofa, and it will make
a nice bed."

There was no alternative, and when Mr. Hargrove returned at midnight,
he deemed it useless to reprimand or expostulate, as Regina declared
herself very comfortable, and pleaded for permission to remain until
morning.

Looking very sad and careworn, the pastor stood for some minutes
leaning on his gold-headed cane. As he bade her goodnight and turned
from the lounge, she put her hand on the cane.

"Please, sir, lend me this until morning. Hannah sleeps soundly, and
if I am forced to wake her, I can easily do so by tapping on the
floor with your cane."

"Certainly, dear; keep it as long as you choose. But I am afraid none
of us will sleep much to-night. It is a heavy trial to give up
Douglass. He is my younger, better self."

He walked slowly away, and she thought he looked more aged and infirm
than she had ever seen him, his usually erect head drooping, as if
bowed by deep sorrow.

For an hour after his departure his footsteps resounded in the room
overhead, as he paced to and fro, but when the distant indistinct
echo of the town clock told two all grew quiet upstairs.

In the dining-room the shaded lamp burned dimly, and Regina could see
the outline of Hannah's form on the sofa, and knew from the continual
turning first on one side, then on the other, that the old woman was
awake, though no sound escaped her.

Engrossed by a profound yet silent grief that rendered sleep
impossible, Regina lay with her hands folded over the small packet,
wondering what it contained, regretting that the conditions of the
gift prohibited her opening it for so many long years, and striving
to divest herself of a haunting foreboding that she had looked for
the last time on the bright benignant countenance of the donor, who
was indissolubly linked with the happiest memories of her lonely
life.

Imagination magnified the perils of the tedious voyage that included
two oceans, and as if to intensify and blacken the horrors of the
future all the fiendish tragedies of Delhi, Meerut, and Cawnpore were
vividly revived among the missionaries to whom Mr. Lindsay was
hastening. Deeply interest