ur after
she had left Haeberlein's room that she heard his unwelcome ring. Late
as it was, she was obliged to keep him waiting a few minutes for it was
exceedingly difficult in those days to get her work done. Not only was
the time hard to obtain, but the writing itself was a difficulty; her
mind was occupied with so many other things, and her strength was so
overtasked that it was often an effort almost intolerable to sit down
and write on the appointed subject.

She was in the hall giving her manuscript to the boy when she saw her
father come downstairs; she followed him into the study, and one look at
his face told her what had happened. He was leaning back in the chair
in which but a few weeks before she had seen Haeberlein himself; it came
over her with a shudder that he looked almost as ill now as his friend
had looked. She sat down on the arm of his chair, and slipped her hand
into his, but did not dare to break the silence. At last he looked up.

"I think you know it," he said. "It is all over, Erica."

"Was Brian there?" she asked.

"Happily, yes; but there was nothing to be done. The end was strangely
sudden and quite painless, just what one would have wished for him. But
oh, child! I can ill spare such a friend just now!"

His voice failed, and great tears gathered in his eyes. He let his head
rest for a minute on Erica's shoulder, conscious of a sort of relief in
the clasp of arms which had so often, in weak babyhood, clung to him
for help, conscious of the only comfort there could be for him as his
child's kisses fell on his lips, and brow, and hair.

"I am overdone, child," he said at length as though to account for
breaking down, albeit, by the confession, which but a short time before
he would never have made, that his strength was failing.

All through the dreary days that followed, Erica was haunted by those
words. The work had to go on just as usual, and it seemed to tell on her
father fearfully. The very cay after Haeberlein's death it was necessary
for him to speak at a mass meeting in the north of England, and he came
back from it almost voiceless and so ill that they were at their wits'
end to know what to do with him. The morrow did not mend matters for
the jury disagreed in the blasphemy trial, and the whole thing had to be
gone through again.

A more trying combination of events could hardly have been imagined,
and Erica, as she stood in the crowded cemetery next day at the funeral,
th