Mrs. Mitchell brightened the lamp and began to match the squares of a calico "rising sun" quilt she was making as her Christmas present to the Methodist parsonage. Judge Kent leaned back in his arm-chair, his silver-powdered head on the red cushion, good looking, debonair, thoroughly content; and in one hand he held a richly gilded liqueur glass, brimming with an emerald cordial. Eglah came to his side and put her hand on his wrist. "Father, Dr. Plympton forbids liqueurs. Please do not drink that." "Only a thimbleful of _creme de menthe_! Babies take mint tea. Even Mrs. Mitchell drinks this." His fine eyes sparkled mischievously, and he bowed to her. "No, sir. I make my mint cordial from my own garden, and I know what is in it; but you can't be sure about foreign-fangled mixtures." "I wish to make sure that delicious gumbo-file will not give me nightmare." "Father, I begged you not to touch it, and you had your favorite clam bouillon the doctor commends so highly." "Bouillon--gumbo-file? 'As moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine.' My duchess, don't scold. Your pretty mouth was made for sweeter uses. Kiss me." He brushed his white mustache aside, and leaning down she pressed her lips to his. "Father, are you quite well to-night?" "Quite well, and absolutely happy. Now, give me some music to round out and seal this glorious, perfect day." She opened the upright piano, and while she played one of his favorite fugues--Handel's in E minor--he kept time, swinging the tiny, gilded glass. Flickering flames in the wide chimney were reflected on the polished rosewood panels of the piano, and as they wavered up and down before her, Eglah thought of spectral auroral fringes flashing in moonless Polar night, staining with prismatic hues the world of snow, kindling red beacons on pinnacles of immemorial ice. The fugue ended, and as her fingers left the keys a tinkling crash caused her to turn her head. The liqueur glass was shattered on the floor and Judge Kent lay insensible in his chair. Paralysis appeared so complete that for some days Doctors Plympton and Eggleston entertained no hope; but the sufferer rallied surprisingly, and while his utterance was not fully intelligible, and he never regained the use of his lower limbs, he was often conscious. Mrs. Mitchell and the physicians would have welcomed a passionate outbreak of the silent grief that seemed to have frozen Eglah, as, calm and dry-eyed, she ministered in the sick-room she rarely left. Two faithful men assisted in nursing--one by day, one by night, because she could not lift her father--and she slept on a cot beside him, or across the foot of his bed. She administered all his medicine, fed him with her own hands, caressed, and cheered him.