"You and the old people, Jack," whispered the doctor, rising and taking Goff by the arm, "you all just talk to her, get her back to the dairy and the old ways again, if you can. If she can be quieted and her mind bridged over the shock, she’ll be all right again. And to-night will tell," he added quietly, "so be very calm. I have given her all the morphine she’ll stand, tried everything, but if she can’t be made to sleep she’ll lose her mind and if she doesn’t sleep to-night her mind is doomed." I was not certain, but I had always suspected that I possessed the power of suggestion. I had felt it in dealing with dumb animals and weaker people. I sat by her, talking to her in the old way. "It is Jack, Elsie," I said, "your own Jack. We’ve met in our old trysting place. We are under our old trees, and Tammas and Marget are here and you are tired and are going to sleep while your head is on my lap. I’ll watch you sleep—sleep now," I said softly, stroking her forehead. There was a deep sigh, then the frightened wild look died out of her eyes and with a smile like her old one she slept. The doctor beckoned me. "That’s good," he said in the hallway. "Just let the nurse and Marget stay with her, let her sleep all night if she will." "But I will have to waken her," I said. He smiled. "Oh no; she’ll waken herself." "I’ll stay here all night, Colonel Goff," I assured her father. "Thank you, Jack," he said, his face brightening for the first time. "Of course you will stay with her." "The crisis will come with her awakening," said the doctor. "She will awaken sound of mind and at death’s door, or she will awaken to live, her mind gone. It is all in her sleeping, and to-night will decide it. I will retire, waken me if I am needed." All night Colonel Goff and I sat up. Every little while we went into her room to see Elsie sleeping, Marget by her side, the nurse asleep on the cot. Twice the doctor came in. "Her pulse and temperature are normal," he would say. "That’s good. Let her sleep." But Colonel Goff and I could not sleep. All night he smoked, talked and walked the floor. He told me his life’s story, and in the hopefulness of Elsie’s sleeping he seemed to have taken a new hold of things. "If the hand that has flung the loaded dice for me all my life will only give me one clean deal now," he cried, as he paced the floor with his steady military stride. "It will," I said, "Colonel Goff. It gives a clean deal to a clean heart always, and yours is a different heart now. I see it; you are a different man now. Now, I would give my very life for you and my poor little Elsie." There was deep emotion in the man before me, his eyes were moist. "Great God, Jack, do you mean that, man? Do you know you have said it? It is even so—I see it—have seen it all night—wondering, how—