died and his
own heart was broken."

There was a look in her eyes which made Tom reply, quickly: "Don't write
any more just now; the professor has promised us something for next
week. Don't write any more till till the chieftain is well."

After that she wished him good night rather hastily, crept upstairs to
her attic, and threw herself down on her bed. Why had he spoken of the
future? Why had his voice hesitated? No, she would not think, she would
not.

So the article appeared in that week's "Idol-Breaker", and thousands and
thousands of people laughed over it. It even excited displeased comment
from "the other side," and in many ways did a great deal of what in
Guilford Terrace was considered "good work." For Erica herself, it was
long before she had time to give it another thought; it was to her only
a desperately hard duty which she had succeeded in doing. Nobody every
guessed how much it had cost her.

The weary time dragged on, days and weeks passed by; Raeburn was growing
weaker, but clung to life with extraordinary tenacity. And now very
bitterly they felt the evils of this voluntarily embraced poverty, for
the summer heat was for a few days almost tropical, and the tiny little
rooms in the lodging-house were stifling. Brian was very anxious to
have the patient moved across to his father's house; but, though Charles
Osmond said all he could in favor of the scheme, the other doctors would
not consent, thinking the risk of removal too great. And, besides,
it would be useless, they maintained the atheist was evidently dying.
Brian, who was the youngest, could not carry out his wishes in defiance
of the others, but he would not deny himself the hope of even yet saving
Erica's father. He devised punkahs, became almost nurse and doctor in
one, and utterly refused to lose heart. Erica herself was the only other
person who shared his hopefulness, or perhaps her feeling could
hardly be described by that word; she was not hopeful, but she had
so resolutely set herself to live in the present that she had managed
altogether to crowd out the future, and with it the worst fear.

One day, however, it broke upon her suddenly. Some one had left a
newspaper in the sick-room; it was weeks since she had seen one, and in
a brief interval, while her father slept, or seemed to sleep, she took
it up half mechanically. How much it would have interested her a little
while ago, how meaningless it all seemed to her now. "Latest Teleg