undertaking anything but a journey, myself. Any exertion makes me feel as if I should collapse utterly."

Nancy bent to kiss her. "Perhaps you need a tonic. Shall I call up Dr. Turner and ask him to stop in?"

Mrs. Loomis shook her head. "No, it isn't worth while. I know exactly what he would say. It is the same old trouble. He wouldn't give me anything new. I am out of the drops he ordered the last time, but I will send for them to-morrow."

"Mañana; that old mañana," returned Nancy, playfully. "Why not send at once?"

"One more day will not make any difference," protested Mrs. Loomis. "Iry is busy cutting the grass and I don't want to take him away from his work."

"I could go."

"In this heat? No, indeed. I should be afraid of sunstroke, and should be so worried every minute you were gone that it would do me twice the harm it would to wait."

So Nancy yielded, but told herself that she would take an early morning ride into the town and bring out the medicine before breakfast the next morning.

But the dawning of the morning was not on this earth for Virginia Loomis, for, while the world was yet in half light, old Parthy came to Nancy's door, tears rolling down her dark cheeks. "De white hoss done been hyar, honey," she said. "I been a-lookin' fo' him. Udder day a li'l buhd fly into Miss Jinny's room, an' a dawg been howlin' uvver night fo' a week."

Nancy, sitting up in bed, gazed at the woman with startled eyes. "What? Who?" she began, but could not go on, feeling the weight of some tragedy imminent.

"Las' night 'pears lak Miss Jinny skeerce kin drag huhse'f up stairs," Parthy went on, "an' dis mawnin' airly when de roosters a-crowin', three o'clock, I reckons, I jes' kaint sleep, an' wakes up Iry an' says ef dat dawg don' stop dat howlin' I los' my min', an' Iry gits up, too, fo' I feels sumpin bleedged mek me go up an' see ef Miss Jinny want nothin' I dunno de whys an' wharfores of dat but I feels lak I bleedged ter go." She paused and Nancy, never moving, kept her eyes fixed in the same startled gaze.

"Go on," she whispered. Faint light was creeping into the room. A gentle breeze drifted in through the open windows, swaying the curtains ever so gently. There were one or two twittering cheeps from newly awakened birds. A wagon rattled clumsily 

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