In his earnestness he grasped her arm, as if he thus would hold her, while the tears rained over his wrinkled face. For a moment Maddy made no response. She had no intention of leaving him, but the burden was pressing heavily and her tongue refused to move. Maddy then was a stranger to the religion which was sustaining her grandfather in his great trouble, but the teachings of her childhood had not been in vain. She was God’s covenant child. His protecting presence was over and around her, moving her to the right. New York, with its gay sights; her school, where in another year she was to graduate; the trip to the Catskills which Guy had promised Mrs. Agnes, Jessie and herself; Aikenside, with its luxurious ease—all these must be given up, while, worse than all the rest, Guy, too, must be given up. He would not come to Honedale often; the place was not to his taste, and in time he would cease to care for her as he cared for her now. “Oh, that would be dreadful!” she groaned aloud, while her thoughts went backward to that night ride in the snow-storm, and the numberless attentions he had paid then. She should never ride with him again—never; and Maddy moaned bitterly, as she began to realize for the first time how much she liked Guy Remington, and how the giving him up and his society was the hardest part of all. But Maddy had a brave young heart, and at last, winding her arms around her grandfather’s neck, she whispered: “I will not leave you, grandpa. I’ll stay in grandmother’s place.” Surely Heaven would answer the blessings which the delighted old man whispered over the young girl, taking so cheerfully the burden from which many would have shrunk. With her grandfather’s hand upon her head, Maddy could almost feel that the blessing was descending; but in her own little room, where she had lain sick for so many weary weeks, her courage began to give way, and the burden, magnified tenfold by her nervous weakness, looked heavier than she could bear. How could she stay there, going through each day with the same routine of literal drudgery—drudgery which would not end until the two for whom she made the sacrifice were dead. “Oh, is there no way to escape, no help?” she moaned, as she tossed from side to side. “Must my life be wasted here? Surely——” Maddy did not finish the sentence, for something checked the words of repining, and she seemed to hear again her grandfather’s voice as it repeated the promise to those who keep with their whole souls the fifth commandment.