She came--before I had half finished. The first thing I noticed was the inner light in her--a light as from many candles. It shone all over her face and made the room brighter for a long time after she had left. The next thing I noticed was the way everybody watched for her to come round--everybody turning child again with nose pressed hard against the window-pane. It made me remember Stevenson's _Lamplighter_; and for many days there rang in my ears one of his bits of human understanding: And oh! before you hurry by with ladder and with light, O Leerie, see a little child and nod to him to-night. Before I knew it I had all the makings of a story. I trailed it through the mud of gossip and scandal; I followed it to the highroad of adventure and on to the hills of inspiration and sacrifice. It was all there--ripe for the plucking; and with the good assistance of Hennessy I plucked it. Before the story was half written I was well--so much for the healing grace of a story and the right person to put in it. This much I have told that you may know that _Leerie_ is as true as all the best and finest things in the world are true. I am only the passer-on of life as she has made it--spiced, trimmed, and lighted with many candles. So if the taste pleases, help yourself bountifully; there is enough for all. And if you must thank any one--thank _Leerie_. RUTH SAWYER. [Illustration] LEERIE Chapter I THE MAN WHO FEARED SLEEP Peter Brooks felt himself for a man given up. He had felt his physical unfitness for some time in the silent, condemning judgment masked under the too sympathetic gaze of his fellow-men; he had felt it in the over-solicitous inquiries after his health made by the staff; and there was his chief, who had fallen into the comfortable week-end habit of telling him he looked first-rate, and in the same breath begging him to take the next week off. For months past he had been conscious of the sidelong glances cast by his brother alumni at the College Club when he appeared, and the way they had of dropping into a contradictory lot of topics whenever he joined a group unexpectedly showed only too plainly that he had been the real subject under discussion. Yes, he felt that the world at large had turned its thumb down as far as he was concerned, but it had caused him surprisingly little worry until that last visit to Doctor Dempsy.