f hesitation Barbara leaned forward to examine the
silver buttons.

"It--it doesn't seem possible," she faltered. "What sort of a--a day?"

And then, with smooth, serious face upturned, she listened to Miss
Sarah's tale--her own story of how she had dressed a gloomy-faced boy
in half-century-old finery and sent him townward for eggs. When it was
finished and she had decided, abruptly, that she must be going,
suddenly, wet-eyed, she wheeled in the doorway and went blindly back to
the older woman's arms. Miss Sarah hugged her once; then stood her
away at arm's length. She knew how few women weep, without hiding
their heads.

"There, we mustn't be temperamental," she chided. "It's only for a
winter, at most. Remember, I love you very dearly, Barbara; write to
me whenever you are lonely. And be a very good girl."

It was a brave bit of comfort, but Caleb's tiny sister, whose face had
never lost its pink-and-whiteness, looked suddenly tired and old when
she was alone again. As blindly as Barbara had come into her arms, she
reached for the dog-eared picture and held it to her flat breasts.
There is no greatness of soul save there be simplicity. Very directly,
very simply Miss Sarah stood there in the middle of her girlish room
and spoke to her Creator.

"I do not mean to meddle, dear God," she whispered, with tears
squeezing from beneath tight lids. "I only want to help a little, if I
may. You see, I've never had a baby of my own."

The door of the ground floor room which served Dexter Allison as an
office was ajar when Barbara re-entered the house beyond the hedge.
There was a streak of light running out across the floor of the dim
hall from within, and the girl lingered on her hurried way to her own
room to bid her father good-night. But she found Wickersham alone when
she pushed wider the door. The light was behind him and she could not
see how distorted was his face, yet as she paused on the threshold and
a thin and pungent odor crinkled her nostrils, she sensed, somehow,
that he had not been long alone.

"Father gone to bed?" she called. "Well, that's wise. You'd better
come, too; it's time you were asleep."

She did not remember, just then, that other night when he had addressed
those same words to her. She only knew that his features became
suffused with purple even before she had finished. And then she
realized quickly that it was alcohol she smelled; knew, too, that it
was not Wickersham wh