don't you think?"

"I agree with you, and will endeavor to follow out your wishes in this, as in every other respect." So he took up his hat, but at the door gave his little habitual cough and said, "I regret that necessity urges you to leave us, Miss Nancy, but I trust you will not forget your old friends, your old home, and that some day you will return to us."

"I shall never forget, never," answered Nancy, emphatically, "and I shall be writing to you, of course."

"I am gratified that occasion will require it," responded Mr. Weed, and went out.

Nancy returned to the house. She felt very hopeful, almost buoyant. Something of her own mother's brave spirit was reflected in her. She had grown immeasurably in character since trouble had befallen her, and in the hours of self-communion, which a sick-bed must always induce, she had come face to face with the invisible powers which encourage a view of spiritual realities. Her mother's story enabled her better to understand values, though with this understanding came a truer realization of what she had given up in dismissing Terrence Wirt.

To the faltering tale of her romance her mother listened with grave interest. "No wonder, my darling, that all these shocks were too much for your poor little brain," she said. "How true it is that when troubles arrive they are so liable not to come singly but in battalions. It may be that it is to test our strength, our faith, our courage to the uttermost. Even a knowledge of enduring love comes to us many times in the midst of adversity."

"How well you understand. It is so comforting that you do understand, madre, and it is because you, too, had such great sorrows coming one after another. Yet how much braver you were than I. You did not succumb to them, but went right on."

"Ah, no. You must not think that. I did not go right on. At first I seemed paralyzed. I sank down, down into a gulf of despair, and only the necessity of action, the glimmer of that spark of hope led me forward."

"It will still lead you forward to find Pepé." She sat leaning against her mother's shoulder in silence for a moment, then she said wistfully, "Dear madre, do you think there is a faint glimmer, the faintest sort of glimmer of hope that I shall ever meet Terrence again? Of course I realize," she added quickly, "that everything is changed. We are poor. I am no longer the daughter of Mrs. James Loomis, no longer the heiress to this estate, but only the child 

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