et with
calamity. That their visions were, as a rule, gruesome and included pale
and ghastly faces and voices hollow with portent was now a supporting
recollection. "He was not dead. He was not an angel. He was Donal,"
Robin had said in her undoubting voice. And she had stood the test--that
real test of earthly egg and buttered toast. Dowie was a sensible and
experienced creature and had been prepared before the doctor's
suggestion to lose no advantage. If the child began to sleep and eat her
food, and the fits of crying could be controlled, why should she not be
allowed to believe what supported her? When her baby came she'd forget
less natural things. Dowie knew how her eyes would look as she bent over
it--how they would melt and glow and brood and how her childish mouth
would quiver with wonder and love. Who knew but that the Lord himself
had sent her that dream to comfort her because she had always been such
a loving, lonely little thing with nothing but tender goodness in her
whole body and soul? She had never had an untender thought of anybody
but for that queer dislike to his lordship-- And when you came to think
of what had been forced into her innocent mind about him, who
wondered?-- And she was beginning to see that differently too, in these
strange days. She was nothing now but softness and sorrow. It seemed
only right that some pity should be shown to her.

Dowie noticed that she did not stay up late that night and that when she
went to bed she knelt a long time by her bedside saying her prayers. Oh!
What a little girl she looked, Dowie thought,--in her white night gown
with her long curly plait hanging down her back tied with a blue ribbon!
And she to be the mother of a child--that was no more than one herself!

When all the prayers were ended and Dowie came back to the room to tuck
her in, her face was marvellously still-looking and somehow remotely
sweet as if she had not quite returned from some place of wonderful
calm.

She nestled into the softness of the pillow with her hand under her
cheek and her lids dropped quietly at once.

"Good night, Dowie dear," she murmured. "I am going to sleep."

To sleep in a moment or so Dowie saw she went--with the soft suddenness
of a baby in its cradle.

But it could not be said that Dowie slept soon. She found herself lying
awake listening to the wind whirling and crying round the tower. The
sound had something painfully human in it which made her conscious of