Up-stairs in her pretty chamber Miss Diana sat and thought. Ruin and starvation. Was that what it meant? She had seen the words in print often but they seemed different now. Ruin meant a giving up and going out, while the auctioneer's hammer smote upon one's heart with cruel blows, and one could not see to say farewell because one's eyes were full of tears. It would not be starvation--of the body. She must be thankful for that. The house and grounds were in a good locality and she had refused several handsome offers for them during the past year. She caught her breath a little as she thought of the wide stretching field where her dainty Jersey was feeding, with its cluster of trees in one corner, under which a brook babbled joyously as it danced on its way to the river; the pretty barn with its pigeon-house where her snow-white fantails craned their imperious heads; the wide porch with its flower drapery, where she sat and read or worked with her pet spaniel at her feet, and where her friends loved to gather through the summer afternoons and chat over the early supper before they went back to the city's grime and stir. Then in thought she entered the house. The room which had been her father's and the library which held his books. Could she sell those! She shivered, as in imagination she heard the careless inventory of the auctioneer. She had never attended an auction except once, and then she had hurried away, for it seemed to her the pictured faces were misty with tears and she fancied the draperies sighed, as they waved in the wind which swept through the gaping windows. There were the engravings which she loved and the pictures her father had brought with him from Europe, and the rare old china and her mother's silver service, and her store of delicate napery and household linen; while every table and chair had a story and the very walls of each room were dear. Had she been making idols of these things in her heart? Miss Diana knelt beside the couch, comfortable as only old-fashioned couches know how to be. "Dear Christ," she cried, "I am thy follower and I have gone shod with velvet while thy feet were travel-stained, and I have slept upon eider-down while thou hadst not where to lay thine head!" She knelt on, motionless, until the twilight fell and the stars began to peep out in the sky. Then she went down-stairs and there was a strange, exalted look upon her sweet face. "Unavella," she cried softly, "I have found the sunlight, for I can say 'The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.'" "Oh, Miss Di-an!" wailed Unavella, "I b'lieve you're goin' ter die an' be an angul afore the moon changes!" * * * * * Miss Diana had been to see her lawyer and he had confirmed her decision. Her income was gone. With the exception of a couple of hundred dollars, coming to her from a different source, she was penniless. There was nothing left her but to sell.