ip.

Now when she asked for the paper, Darling felt that the ice was
beginning to break, and gave what seemed to him genial encouragement.

"First time that you've asked for anything but daily rations, Sister
Halsey; glad to see you plucking up heart. The living God giveth us all
things richly to enjoy." He repeated the last words in an unctuous
drawl while he was looking for the paper, "richly to--enjoy. Well now, I
was thinking we had some with a black border on it, but you're more than
welcome to such as there is."

The stores indeed were scanty enough; food, cloth, household utensils, a
little stationery, a large pile of devotional books, were arranged in
meagre order in the shed used as a warehouse. Darling had as yet
scarcely respectable clothes to wear, but Susannah was astonished only
at the energy that had in a few days collected so much, at the order and
patient kindliness which ruled in this poverty-stricken administration.
Already those who could work paid into the common store, and those who
had lost all had but to state their needs to have them supplied as well
as might be.

"One, two, three--will three sheets be enough, Sister Halsey? You've
been hearing, I suppose, that Mr. Smith is going to be moved to the town
of Boome, and that he is going to be allowed to get his letters now?
He'd be real cheered to hear from you, although"--he added this with
decent haste--"it will be a great grief to him to hear of your loss!"

"Is he well?" she asked.

"The State authorities are in a fine to-do about him, I suppose you
know, sister, for they can't find a single charge to bring him to trial
on. You bet the trial would have been on long ago if they'd had a
single leg to stand on. Anything else that I can serve you with to-day?
We've got some new women's shawls and hats come in. Won't you just step
here and have a look at them? No? Well, next time; but there ain't one
of our women as doesn't want one of them new bonnets."

Susannah went out into the spring on the outskirts of the town. The
birds were singing; everywhere the dandelions swelled out their happy
tufted breasts to the sunshine; even a long worm that she noticed
crawling lazily in the heat spoke to her of enjoyment of some sort. Her
own heart leaped, and she thought it was in answer to the spring. She
forgot the dire fates with which she had been grappling, forgot to hate
and to grieve.

In the small wooden room that she shared with Elvira, while