Prayer with Alice was no mere form to be gone through; it was a real thing,—a communing with a living Presence,—and she grew quiet and calm under its influence, and sat for a time drinking in the beauty of the night, and looking far off across the valley to the hills beyond,—the hills nearer to New Haven,—where she had been so happy. Then, as she felt strong enough to bear it, she took her lamp, and went noiselessly down the wide hall and through a green baize door into a narrow passage which led away from the front part of the building. Before one of the doors she paused, and felt again the same heart beat she had so many times experienced when she drew near that door and heard the peculiar sound which always made her for a moment faint and sick. But that sound was hushed now, and the room into which Alice finally entered was silent as the grave; and the moon, which came through the windows in such broad sheets of silvery light, showed that it was empty of all human life save that of the young girl who stood looking round, her lip quivering and her eyes filling with tears as one familiar object after another met her view. There was the cradle in the corner, just where it had stood for years, and the carpet in that spot told of the constant motion which had worn the threads away; and there, too, was the chair by the window, where Alice had so often seen a wasted figure sit, and the bed with its snowy coverings, to which sleep was almost a stranger. Alice knelt by this bed, and with her hand upon the crib which seemed to bring the absent one so near to her, she prayed again, and her tears fell like rain upon the pillows which she kissed for the sake of the feverish, restless head which had so often lain there. “Poor darling,” she said, “do you know that Alice is here to-night in your own room? Do you know that she is praying for you, and loving you, and pitying you so much?” Then as the words “if Allie was here I shouldn’t have to go away,” recurred to her mind, she sobbed, “No, darling, if Allie had been here you should not have gone, and now that she is here, she’ll bring you back again ere long, and bear with all your fancies more patiently than she ever did before.” There was another kiss upon the pillow as if it had been a living face, and Alice’s fair hands petted and caressed and smoothed the ruffled linen, and then she turned away and passed again into the passage and through the green baize door, back into the broader hall, where the air seemed purer, and she breathed free again. The morning succeeding Alice’s return to Beechwood was cool and beautiful, and the sun shone brightly through the white mist which lay on the river and curled up the mountain side. Alice was awake early, and when Nan came to call her she found her dressed and sitting by the open window, looking out upon the grounds and the park beyond.