ng isle. Every shrub and bush
was blooming; the trees were hung with rosy garlands, and even the earth
was carpeted with tiny flowers. The rare fragrances, the bird songs,
soft and musical, the ravishment of color, all bore down upon her
swimming senses at once, taking them captive so completely that she
remembered no past, was conscious of no present, looked forward to no
future. She seemed to leave the body and the sad, heavy things of the
body. The humming in her ears ceased, the light faded, the birds songs
grew fainter and more distant, the golden circle of pain receded farther
and farther until it was lost to view; even the flowering island gently
drifted away, and all was peace and silence.

It was time for the doctor now, and Clara Belle, too anxious to wait
longer, softly turned the knob of her mother's door and entered the
room. The glow of the open fire illumined the darkest side of the poor
chamber. There were no trees near the house, and a full November moon
streamed in at the unblinded, uncurtained windows, lighting up the bare
interior--the unpainted floor, the gray plastered walls, and the white
counterpane.

Her mother lay quite still, her head turned and drooping a little on
the pillow. Her left hand was folded softly up against her breast, the
fingers of the right partly covering it, as if protecting something
precious.

Was it the moonlight that made the patient brow so white, and where were
the lines of anxiety and pain? The face of the mother who had washed
and cried and cried and washed was as radiant as if the closed eye were
beholding heavenly visions.

"Something must have cured her!" thought Clara Belle, awed and almost
frightened by the whiteness and the silence.

She tiptoed across the floor to look more closely at the still, smiling
shape, and bending over it saw, under the shadow of the caressing right
hand, a narrow gold band gleaming on the work-stained finger.

"Oh, the ring came, after all!" she said in a glad whisper, "and perhaps
it was that that made her better!"

She put her hand on her mother's gently. A terrified shiver, a warning
shudder, shook the girl from head to foot at the chilling touch. A dread
presence she had never met before suddenly took shape. It filled the
room; stifled the cry on her lips; froze her steps to the floor, stopped
the beating of her heart.

Just then the door opened.

"Oh, doctor! Come quick!" she sobbed, stretching out her hand for
help, a