id Barbara. "But I think he seemed rather nervous when
he came over. And he would not sit in the house, though the wind was
coming up then. He said he liked the air; and he and father got the
shaker chairs up there by the front door; and he sat and pinched his
knees together to make a lap to hold his papers; it was as much as he
could manage; no wonder his hands trembled."

"I wonder what they were talking about," said Rosamond.

"I'm glad Uncle Stephen went home with him," said Ruth.

"I wonder if we shall have this house to live in if grandfather should
die," said Stephen, suddenly. It could not have been his _first_
thought; he had sat soberly silent a good while.

"O Stevie! _don't_ let's think anything about that!" said Ruth; and
nobody else answered at all.

We sent Stephen off to bed, and we girls sat round the fire, which we
had made up in the great open fireplace, till twelve o'clock; then we
all went up stairs, leaving the side door unfastened. Ruth brought
some pillows and comfortables into Rosamond and Barbara's room, made
up a couch for herself on the box-sofa, and gave her little white one
to Leslie. We kept the door open between. We could see the light in
grandfather's northwest chamber; and the lamp was still burning in the
porch below. We could not possibly know anything; whether Robert had
got back, and the doctor had come,--whether he was better or
worse,--whether father would come home to-night. We could only guess.

"O Leslie, it is so good you are here!" we said.

There was something eerie in the night, in the wreck and confusion of
the storm, in our loneliness without father and mother, and in the
possible awfulness and change that were so near,--over there in
Grandfather Holabird's lighted room.

CHAPTER VIII.

HALLOWEEN.

Breakfast was late the next morning. It had been nearly two o'clock
when father had come home. He told us that grandfather was better;
that it was what the doctor called a premonitory attack; that he might
have another and more serious one any day, or that he might live on
for years without a repetition. For the present he was to be kept as
easy and quiet as possible, and gradually allowed to resume his old
habits as his strength permitted.

Mother came back in a few days more; Aunt Radford also was better. The
family fell into the old ways again, and it was as if no change had
threatened. Father told mother, however, something of importance that
grandfath