system seemed to have suddenly given out. He had overtaxed Nature, and she was paying him for it. "Lyddy!" he whispered, when finally his heavy-lidded eyes opened and he saw her standing beside the cot. The girl made a brave effort to look and speak cheerfully; and Mr. Bray's comprehension was so dulled that she carried the matter off very successfully while she remained. She spoke cheerfully; she chatted about their last night's experiences; she even laughed over some of Aunt Jane's sayings--Aunt Jane was always a source of much amusement to Mr. Bray. But the nurse had warned her to be brief, and soon she was beckoned away. She knew he was in good hands at the hospital, and that they would do all that they could for him. But what the house physician had told her was uppermost in her mind as she left the institution. How were they to get to Hillcrest--and live after arriving there? "If that man paid me twenty dollars for our furniture, I might have fifty dollars in hand," she thought. "It will cost us something like two dollars each for our fares. And then there would be the freight and baggage, and transportation for ourselves up to Hillcrest from the station." And how would it do to bring father to an old, unheated house--and so early in the spring? I guess the doctor didn't think about that. "And how will we live until it is time for us to go--until father is well enough to be moved? All our little capital will be eaten up!" Lyddy's practical sense then came to her aid. Saturday night 'Phemie would get through at the millinery shop. They must not remain dependent upon Aunt Jane longer than over Sunday. "The thing to do," she decided, "is for 'Phemie and me to start for Hillcrest immediately--on Monday morning at the latest. If one of us has to come back for father when he can be moved, all right. The cost will not be so great. Meanwhile we can be getting the old house into shape to receive him." She found Aunt Jane sitting before her fire, with a tray of tea and toast beside her, and her bonnet already set jauntily a-top of her head, the strings flowing. "You found that flat in a mess, I'll be bound!" observed Aunt Jane. Lydia admitted it. She also told her what the second-hand man had offered. "Twenty dollars?" cried Aunt Jane. "Take it, quick, before he has a change of heart!" But when Lyddy told her of what the doctor at the hospital had said about Mr. Bray, and how they really seemed forced into taking up with the offer of Hillcrest, the old lady looked and spoke more seriously. "You're just as welcome to the use of the old house, and all you can make out of the farm-crop, as you can be. I stick to what I told you last night. But I dunno whether you can really be comfortable there." "We'll find out; we'll try it," returned Lyddy, bravely. 

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