at her. For one instant the rigid control in which he held himself almost gave way. But he recovered himself and she went on feebly: “Will you carry me down to breakfus’?” Then her eyes closed. She seemed to be slipping away.

His face became like marble. The child was dying, and she did not know it. He put his lips to her ear: “Daisy,” in an agonized voice, “this is a sad world; wouldn’t you like to go and leave it?”

The child lifted her heavy lids. “Leave it,” she lisped.

“Yes, and go to heaven,” he ejaculated in a desperate, broken voice. “where the Lord Jesus our Savour is. You will be very happy there. He will give you a white robe and a golden harp, and you will have other little children to play with you; and there will be beautiful fields and flowers—”

“How werry nice,” half sighed, half breathed the exhausted child. A sweet, almost seraphic smile, flitted over her little face. Then a doubt assailed her. With a last, supreme effort, she tried to raise herself and look in his face. “Are you comin’ too, Woland?”

A look of blank despair met her loving glance. Surprised and bewildered, she shook off for an instant her coming lethargy. “Woland,” she said sharply, “I sha’n’t go to heaven widout you.” Then she sank back on the pillow—her eyes closed.

The frightful tension in which the lad held himself gave way. Her little fingers slipped from his grasp, and he fell back, in a dead faint. It did not disturb the little one however, and in a little time he was himself again, and anxiously watching the coming of the end.

CHAPTER IV

Life’s Benediction

IF we poor, short-sighted mortals had the planning of our lives, how strangely would they be laid out! I had imagined that the child was going to die, in order that her influence over the life that had become so strangely mixed up with hers might live. It had not occurred to me that the lad, thrown into a state of desperation and feeling himself branded as her murderer, might be tempted to some rash act. Thank heaven, he was not put to it. The child did not die, but lived to be a further blessing to him.

When he waked from his swoon, we were able to whisper in his ear that she had fallen into a quiet sleep—that possibly there had been a mistake made. He staggered to his feet, and sat by the sleeping child for a while, with a look of one who has received a reprieve from death, then went to his room and shut himself in. From that hour he was a different creature. The heavy stamp of affliction had been laid upon him. He was a man now, in the best sense of the word.

Day by day, Daisy steadily improved; Robertson was constantly with her, and until she was able to run about on her own small feet, he carried her everywhere in his strong arms. Sometimes he would walk up and down the halls for hours at a time, listening to her childish confidences and telling her stories with the utmost patience and gentleness. And his devotion did not cease when her strength returned. Her solitary life was at an end. Half his leisure time he spent with her. This had the inevitable effect of lessening his intercourse with his former boon companions. They had claimed a monopoly of his time. Now he got in with another set—these jolly, good fellows, who kept him out in the daytime, playing out-door games, and sending him home so exhausted that he wanted no further excitement for the night, but a book, a comfortable seat, and Daisy’s good-night kiss.

The child was proving a guardian angel to him, and not only to