leaning over her said, “Daisy, won’t you speak to me?”

At the sound of his voice, the child opened her eyes, and looked up at him dreamily. Then in a low voice, she repeated the terrible oath he had uttered a few hours before. It sounded unspeakably dreadful coming from her childish lips.

“Put on your coat,” I said, “and go for a doctor; the child’s mind is wandering.”

CHAPTER III

Almost Lost

THAT was the beginning of troublous times. For that day, and many subsequent days, the angel of death hovered over the child. A fever had seized upon her, and her little body became wasted and spent till she was but a shadow of her former self. In her delirium, Robertson’s name was constantly on her lips. He, poor fellow, could do nothing. From the first day a nurse was installed in the sick-room, and no one was allowed to enter.

It was on that day that I met, on my way to my office, one of Robertson’s superiors in the bank. “By the way,” he said, “one of our clerks boards where you do—Roland Robertson, his name is. Do you know anything about him? Can you tell me anything in regard to his habits?”

“Very little,” I said hesitatingly. I knew that the man before me was a model of all virtues, and had very little patience with youthful follies. He spoke a few words in a disparaging way, and I knew that Robertson’s careless habits were drawing suspicion upon him, and endangering the remarkably good position he held. The thought flashed into my mind, that perhaps it would be as well for little Daisy to die. The shock of having been the indirect means of her death would sober the lad her little lonely heart had clung to, and make a man of him for life. God was going to take her from us. I pitied Robertson from the bottom of my heart. He was going about the house with a set face which assured me that he had not the slightest hope of the child’s recovery. He never spoke to any one, and after the bank closed, came home and shut himself up in his room. How he passed the time no one knew. One night, I heard Mrs. Drummond come to his door, knock gently, and ask whether he would like to come and say good-bye to Daisy. The doctor had said that she would probably not live through the night, and the nurse thought that now she was having the lucid interval which sometimes comes before death—and she wanted to see him. I stole quietly out of my room, Robertson stood in the hall, his hand on the door-handle, an expression of terrible anguish on his face. Suddenly he composed his features, and went toward the child’s room. I paused on the threshold. The room was dimly lighted and as quiet as the grave. Between the windows, on her mother’s large bed, the child lay—a little, frail, white ghost, her skin deathly pale, and drawn very tightly over her bones, her beautiful, dark eyes fixed languidly on Robertson. He stood at the foot of the bed, his hands clasped around the iron bars with a kind of stony composure on his face.

Daisy gave him a little, wistful smile. Her affection for him was as strong as ever. The fever had not burnt it up, nor was it killed by the pains that racked her tender body. Presently, she murmured a request that he would come beside her. The nurse made room for him by the pillow. He knelt down, clenching one hand in the white counterpane with a vice-like grasp, and holding gently in the other the wasted fingers that Daisy stole feebly toward him.

“Woland, dear boy,” she murmured, in a scarcely audible voice, “I’ve been werry ill.”

His forehead contracted a little. “Yes, I know,” and his voice was very soft and tender and had the sound of tears in it.

“But I’m better now. Mebbe I’ll get up in de mornin’.”

He looked