it will be a happiness to them for the rest of their
lives. Besides, I shall not die today, perhaps not tomorrow; depend upon
it, I shall die hard."

They persuaded Erica to rest for the first part of the night. She left
Tom and Brian to watch, and went to her room, making them promise to
call her if there were any signs of change.

At last the full realization had come to her; though she hated leaving
her father, it was yet a sort of relief to get away into the dark, to be
able to give way for a moment.

"Anything but this, oh, God," she sobbed, "anything but this!"

All else would have been easy enough to bear, but that he should be
killed by the violence and bigotry of one who at any rate called himself
a Christian, this seemed to her not tolerable. The hope of years had
received its death blow, the life she most loved was sinking away in
darkness, the work which she had so bravely taken as her life work was
all but over, and she had failed. Yes, in spite of all her efforts, all
her longings, all her love, she had failed, or at any rate apparently
failed, and in moments of great agony we do not in fact can not
distinguish between the real and the apparent. Christ Himself could not
do it.

She did not dare to let her sobs rise for it was one of the trials of
that time that they were not in their own home but in a busy hotel where
the partitions were thin and every sound could be heard in the adjoining
rooms. Moreover, Aunt Jean was sleeping with her and must not be
disturbed. But as she lay on the floor, trying to stifle the restrained
sobs which shook her from head to foot trying to check the bitter tears
which would come, her thoughts were somehow lifted quite away from the
present; strange little memories of her childish days returned to her,
days when her father had been to her the living incarnation of all that
was noble and good. Often it is not the great events of a child's life
which are so vividly remembered; memory seems to be strangely capricious
and will single out some special word or deed, some trifling sign of
love which has stamped itself indelibly upon the grain to bear its
golden harvest of responding love through a life time. Vividly there
came back to her now the eager happiness with which she had awaited a
long promised treat, as a little thing of seven years old. Her father
was to take her on some special excursion, she had long ago forgotten
what the particular occasion was, only it was som