idsummer Day, which is our national
day in Ellan, and flags were flying over many of the houses in the
village.

ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTEENTH CHAPTER

JULY 6. I feel so much better to-day. I hardly know what reaction of my
whole being, physical and spiritual, has set in since yesterday, but my
heart is lighter than for a long time, and sleep, which I had come to
look upon as a lost blessing, came to me last night for four solid
hours--beautiful and untroubled as a child's.

* * * * *

JULY 8. Martin writes that he expects to be here on the 12th. Letter
full of joyous spirits. "Lots to tell you when I reach home, dearest."
Strange! No mortal can imagine how anxious I am to get him back, yet I
almost dread his coming. When he was away before, Time could not go fast
enough for me. Now it is going too fast. I know what that means--the
story I have to tell. How am I to tell it?

* * * * *

JULY 10. Only two days more and Martin will be here. Of course I must be
up when he arrives. Nurse says No, but I say Yes. To be in bed when he
comes would be too much a shock for him.

"Servants are such domineering tyrants," says Christian Ann, who never
had but one, and "the strange woman" was such a phantom in the house
that the poor mistress was grateful to God when Hollantide came round
and the ghost walked away of itself. My nurse is a dear, though. How
glad I am now that I persuaded Christian Ann to let her stay.

* * * * *

JULY 12. Martin comes to-day, and the old doctor (with such a proud and
stately step) has gone off to Blackwater to meet him. I am terribly weak
(no pain whatever), but perfectly resolute on dressing and going
downstairs towards tea-time. I shall wear a white tea-gown, which Sister
Mildred gave me in London. Martin likes me best in white.

* * * * *

LATER. My Martin has come! We had counted it up that travelling across
the island by motor-car he would arrive at five, so I was dressed and
downstairs by four, sitting in the _chiollagh_ and watching the road
through the window opposite. But he was half an hour late, and Christian
Ann and I were in such a fever that anybody would have believed it to be
half a century and that the world had stood still.

We might have known what would happen. At Blackwater "the boys" (the
same that "got up the spree" when Martin went away) h