"I've laughed to myself more than once at your injunctions to the doctor since Zillah revived. We've had such a narrow escape that I feel as if I ought not to laugh again for a year, but I can't help it. I won't thank you as I meant to--it might make you vain. Good-night," and she gave my hand a quick, strong pressure, and went swiftly back to Mrs. Yocomb's room. Had my hand clasped only flesh and blood, bone and sinew? No, indeed. I felt that I had had within my grasp a gratitude and friendly regard that was so full and real that the warm-hearted, impulsive girl would not trust herself to express it in words. Her manner, however, was so frank and unconstrained that I knew her feelings to be only those of gratitude and friendly regard, seeing clearly that she entertained no such thoughts as had come unbidden to me. In spite of my fatigue, the habit of my life and the strong coffee would have banished all thought of sleep for hours to come, if there had been no other cause, but the touch of a little hand had put more glad awakening life within me than all the stimulants of the world. I went downstairs and looked through the old house to see that all was right, with as much solicitude as if it were indeed my own home. Excepting the disorder I had caused in the kitchen and hall, it had the midnight aspect of quiet and order that might have existed for a century. "I would not be afraid of the ghosts that came back to this home," I muttered. "Indeed, I would like to see Mr. and Mrs. Yocomb's ancestors; and, now I think of it, some one of them should wear a jaunty, worldly hat to account for Adah. By Jove! but she was beautiful as she lay there, with her perfect physical life suspended instantaneously. If the lightning would only create a woman within the exquisite casket, the result would well repay what we have passed through. Her mother would say, as I suppose, that another and subtler fire from heaven were needed for such a task." As I came out into the hall the great clock began to strike, in the slow, dignified manner befitting its age-- "One, two, three--twelve." The day of fate had passed. I knew Emily Warren was laughing at me softly to herself as she and the physician watched with the patients in Mrs. Yocomb's room. I was in no mood to laugh, for every moment the truth was growing clearer that I had met my fate. I looked into the parlor, in which a lamp was burning, and conjured up the scene I had witnessed there. I saw a fair young face, with eyes turned heavenward, and heard again the words, "My faith looks up to Thee." Their faith had been sorely tried. The burning bolt from heaven seemed a strange response to that faith; the crashing thunder a wild, harsh echo to the girl's sweet, reverent tones. "Is it all chance?" I queried, "or all inexorable law? Who or what is the author of the events of this night?" As if in answer, Mrs. Yocomb's text came into my mind: "What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter."