"I believe I'll stay all night with you, Ellie darling, for Aunt Clara is going out again tonight, she says, to nurse the sick; she has to go out so much, doesn't she? But what would we do without Aunt Clara? She is a whole Relief Society of herself, isn't she? You and I haven't had a good talk since Christmas." "Well, all right. But," the girl added hesitatingly, "I'm afraid we'll have to sleep three in a bed, for Aunt Clara has sent Cousin Alice to sleep with me tonight." "Never mind," cheerfully responded Diantha, resolved not to be balked in her endeavor to know more about her friend's walks and ways; "I can easily do that, for I often have extra company, and you and I don't mind crowding a bit." The girls hurried up to their room, soon after the evening prayers were over, and Diantha looked in vain for a third bedfellow. But she refrained from asking where the invisible Alice was, for she instinctively felt that Ellen had lied to her to make an excuse to prevent the talk Diantha had resolved to have with her friend. Dian was a wise girl, and she felt instinctively that it would not be prudent to urge herself upon her friend's confidence. So she chatted on other topics, and they were soon undressed and in bed. For some reason, Dian felt unusually wakeful, and she lay for a long time awake, with a curious feeling, a sort of expectancy of something, or somebody, which made the chills of uncomfortable fear race up and down her back. But at last she fell asleep, trying dimly to account for her strange sensations, and wondering vaguely who was coming. Sometime in the night she awoke, half-startled, and in a moment she was conscious, wide awake, and in perfect control of her faculties. It was the complete instant wakefulness which comes to mothers with sick children, or to men who watch their homes and loved ones in times of danger! She wondered for one brief instant why she was not in her own room, and then it flashed over her. She reached out her hand, and although she was in some way curiously prepared for it, she found her companion not at her side, and she felt all the shock of surprised dread which that discovery would necessarily entail. She lay still a moment, trying to persuade herself that Ellen had gone down stairs for a drink, or that she had gone into Aunt Clara's room, for some purpose, and at last she called out softly: "Ellie, Ellie, dear!" No answer came, and she was about to get up and find a light, when she heard the front door open, and directly after, the sound of hurried, muffled footsteps running up the stairs to her room, and she knew instinctively who it was. "Ellen?" she said at once, as soon as the door opened. "Yes," came the breathless answer, from out the darkness. "Where have you been?" was Dian's rather stern question. "Down stairs after some oil. I have a sore throat."