The happy prospective bridegroom, who had escaped the dire fate the letters threatened to throw across his path by dodging beneath the quilts at the hospital, was now full of the heroism that thrives in peace. The calamity which seemed prepared to fall upon him in the hour of his greatest happiness, Fate had tossed aside, and his star combination proved to be intact and in good working order. Trouble had gathered near in murky concentration for a few minutes that anxious day, but when Hygeia passed out of the door of his room to answer my bell, the knight stood forth with visor up, resumed his normal color, and gradually his power of speech. Those old breadcrumbs cast upon the waters of love years before had washed ashore at a most untimely moment, thought he; but the audience had not reached the end to ponder on the writer's name. A miss was as good as a mile in slipping between the cup and the lip. But the course of true love is a rugged path to the close of the ceremony; beyond, it is still more rugged, and the surrounding country, they say, is often wild and desolate, and quite unlike the park gardening and its beckoning vistas to be seen along Lovers' Lane before the turn in the road at the altar. A cloud no larger than the tiny mist from the whistle of one of those tooting tugs familiar in the harbor scene was gathering while the sun shone so brightly in the tower apartment. An electric shock will gather and burst a cloud large enough to bring midnight and deluge at noonday. Mr. Gibson understood the importance of lightning arresters, but was not prepared to apply them in his home. The women could do nothing; and, of course, I, the only person in the world who might have transformed the current to a harmless voltage, had been shunned as an enemy. Then came the lull before the hurricane--the soft whispering of the wind in the tree-tops. Jim alone could see the havoc it raised along the mountain ridge, foretelling by a few minutes the arrival of the twisting and wrenching blast. "Oh, Nellie, you remember my telling about the gushy love-letters the nurse read to us at the hospital, for our entertainment. Well, here, please take this; she has sent another, which I see by a glance is quite as good as the rest. Would you mind reading it aloud? and then I ask you all to excuse me while I snatch a moment to read her long letter." In this way, Gabrielle believed she would solve the problem of time, that had been so limited that busy day. "Why, certainly; let us have the pleasure, and go ahead with your reading." Nellie was always ready to entertain the company.