s. Ramsay in warm sympathetic tones, as she
stroked the burning hands and brow. "Try and quieten down and go to
sleep. You were getting on very well, you know, and making fine
progress, but you'll make yourself worse than ever if you carry on like
that. There now, dearie! Try and get to sleep, and you'll soon be better
again!"

But Mysie was silent only for a moment, and the low moan soon broke from
her lips again, like the wail of some stricken thing at night upon the
moor, and still she tossed and tumbled feverishly in her bed.

In the morning the doctor came and shook his head. Mysie was ill, very
ill. Her condition was serious, and it was little he could do. Only care
and good nursing and try to keep her from worrying. He left a
prescription, and Peter soon had the necessary medicine, and later the
patient grew calmer, and finally sank into a deep sleep; and so the old
fight had to be fought over again, to get her strength restored and her
vitality increased.

Mysie did not mention another word of home. She lay quiet, hardly even
moving and seldom speaking; but the burning fire that consumed her was
apparent in her hectic cheeks and glowing eyes, and one could see that
her mind was away, never dwelling upon her surroundings, but was
wandering among the heather hills and quiet valleys, where the call of
the curlew and the shout of the lapwing stir the primitive impulses of
those who love the haunts of the moorland life, and weave so much
romance into the lives and souls of the country bred people, who never
grow to love the ugly towns, but whose hearts remain with their first
love--the moors, and the hills, and the mountain brooks for ever.

She seemed to grow a little stronger as the days passed. She took her
medicines regularly and without protest; but deep down in her heart she
felt that she would never get better, and her only desire, that had been
shaping itself ever since Robert had told her of her father's condition,
was to be strong enough, to go home to Lowwood, just to see her parents,
her brothers and sisters, once more; then she could die in peace. If
only she could do that, she would not care what happened. Nothing else
mattered; but she must get home. Nothing would prevent her from doing
that.

It was the instinct of the wounded animal, dragging itself home to
die--home to its home in the kindly earth, away from contact with other
things--just to be alone, to nurse its suffering and its misery, til