to bear because there can be no
letters to bridge the silence. I used to have the same horror of it that
you do, but after your father went away I learned to look upon it as God
intended we should. Not a horrible doom which must overtake every one of
us, but as a beautiful mystery through which we pass as through an open
gate, with glad surprise at the things that shall be made plain to us,
and with a great sense of triumph."

As she spoke, the light of the sunset seemed to turn the mountain trail
up which she was gazing, into a golden path which led straight up to the
City of the Shining Ones, and its radiant glow was reflected in her
face. Mary's eyes followed hers. Somehow she felt warmed and comforted
by her mother's strong faith, but she said nothing. Only sat and watched
with her, the gorgeous colors of the sunset that were transfiguring the
gray old mountain.

If there were only some way of recognizing at their beginning, the days
which are to be hallowed days in our lives! We know them as such after
they have slipped by, and we enshrine them in our memories and go back
to live them over, moment by moment. But it is always with the cry, "Oh,
if I had only known! If I had only filled them fuller while I had them!
If I had not left so much unasked, unsaid!"

Unconscious that this was such a time, Mary sat rocking back and forth
in the silence that followed, drifting into vague day dreams, as they
watched the changing colors over the western mountain tops. Then a
click of the back gate-latch called them both back to speech, and Norman
came around the corner of the house swinging a string of fish. He
announced that Billy Downs had helped catch them and was going to stay
to supper to help eat them.

Billy usually stayed to supper three or four times a week, and on the
nights when he was not there Norman was at his house. The two boys were
inseparable, and a pleasant intimacy had grown up between the families.
That night as usual, he went home at nine o'clock, but came running back
almost immediately, bareheaded and breathless. His mother had been taken
suddenly ill. The only doctor in the place had been called to a case on
the other side of the mountain, and nobody knew when he would be home.
His father and Sara were nearly scared stiff, they were so frightened,
and wouldn't Mrs. Ware please come and tell them what to do?

It was the beginning of a long siege, for no nurses were to be had in
the little settlement