And at evening, in the Ark, I put my little room in perfect order, my head growing heavy with pain. I felt that I must finish this task before I lay down, and there was another intention to which I clung with a painful pertinacity of mind. I sat down at my table and wrote half a dozen or more brief letters home. These were filled with irrelevant anecdotes pertaining to my experience among the Wallencampers, a few desultory descriptions of character and scenery, with a philosophical digression or two. To one not intimately acquainted with the epistolary products of my pen, these letters would have undoubtedly suggested the workings of a crazed and feverish brain, but they were not calculated to arouse any particular alarm in the minds of my friends at home, unless, indeed, it was by reason of the unusual care and painstaking evinced in their chirography and the punctilious manner in which they were dated. The first one I dated for the evening on which I was writing. The next for a time several days in advance of that, and so on, performing this strange act with utter indifference to the presumption of it. When it was finished, I seemed to have forgotten what next to do. Grandma Keeler told me afterwards, that I went to the head of the stairs and called to her, that she came up, and I told her very gravely that I was going to be sick, but I knew I was not going to die, and adjured her with a look in my eyes which she said, "I couldn't go ag'inst, teacher, for it was more convincin' than health," not to write to my friends of my sickness, and instructed her how to send the letters which I had sealed, stamped, directed, and methodically arranged on the table, in their proper order to the post. For the rest, all through the pain and impotence and vague mental wanderings of the days that followed, I had a restful, comforting consciousness that a kind, loving face, like the lamp of my salvation, was hanging ever over me--always it was Grandma Keeler's face, though it seemed to have grown strangely young and fair, and the eyes that followed me with such a loving, tireless, wistful expression in them were like other eyes that I had known, and the watcher's voice was clear and musical, with a youthful repression in it. Still, somehow, it was Grandma's face, _her_ eyes, _her_ voice--and when at last, I woke one morning very weak, but able to recognize clearly all the familiar objects in the room, it was Grandma Keeler indeed, who sat by my bed, beaming gloriously upon me. "Is it most school time, Grandma?" I inquired, feebly, slowly concentrating my gaze on her face. "Oh, laws, no!" said Grandma, with cheerful emphasis, and then continued talking in her quiet monotone. I hardly heard what she said. I was painfully endeavoring to pick up the lost thread of my consciousness where I had left it on that night when I put my room in order and went so wearily to bed. At last I inquired, still vaguely, "How long?"