Then Mrs. Noah sat with her for a time, fanning her with a palm-leaf fan and brushing the flies away. Then Flora came up with a man whom they called “Doctor,” and who gave his sundry little pills and powders dissolved in water, after which they all went out and left her there with Jessie who had been crying, and whose soft little hands felt so cool on her hot head, and whose kisses on her lips made the tears start, and brought a thought of Guy, making her ask, “if he was at the funeral.” She did not know whose funeral, or why she used that word, only it seemed to her that Jessie just came back from somebody’s grave, and she asked if Guy was there. “No,” Jessie said; “mother wanted to write and tell him, but we don’t know where he is.” And this was all Maddy could recall of the days succeeding the night of her last watch at her grandfather’s side, until one balmy August afternoon, when on the Honedale hills there lay that smoky haze so like the autumn time hurrying on apace, and when through her open window stole the fragrance of the later summer flowers. Then, as if waking from an ordinary sleep, she woke suddenly to consciousness, and staring about the room, wondered if it were as late as the western sun would indicate, and how she came to sleep so long. For a while she lay thinking, and as she thought, a sad scene came back to her, a night when her hot hands had been enfolded in those of the dead, and that dead her grandfather. Was it true, or was she laboring under some hallucination of the brain? If true, was that white, placid face still to be seen in the room below, or had they burial him from her sight? She would know, and with a strange kind of nervous strength she arose, and throwing on the wrapper and slippers which lay near, descended the stairs, wondering to find herself so weak, and half shuddering at the deep stillness of the house; stillness broken only by the ticking of the clock and the purring of the house cat, which at sight of Maddy arose from its position near the door and came forward, rubbing its sides against her dress, and trying in various ways to evince its joy at seeing one whose caresses it had missed so long. The little bedroom off the kitchen where grandpa slept and died was vacant; the old fashioned coat was put away, as was every vestige of the old man save the broad-rimmed hat which hung upon the wall just where his hands had hung it, and which looked so much like its owner that with a gush of tears Maddy sank upon the bed, moaning to herself, “Yes, grandpa is dead. I remember now. But Uncle Joseph, where is he? Can he too have died without my knowledge? and she looked round in vain for the lunatic, not a trace of whom was to be found. His room was in perfect order, as was everything about the house, showing that Flora was still the domestic goddess, while Maddy detected also various things which she recognized as having come from Aikenside. Who sent them? Did Guy,