Miranda went to take her place as nurse by the bedside. By-and-by, her mother needing her for a few moments, she called Miss Sullivan. The wrecked man was beginning to stir about uneasily. He murmured and muttered names, evidently those uppermost in his waking thought. Life was struggling to regain voluntary control. He was feverish. Miss Sullivan gave him from time to time spoonfuls of stimulant; his weakness and exhaustion needed this. It was a new position for her, and she managed rather awkwardly,--more awkwardly than one would have expected who knew her usual deftness. Once, when his eyes again half opened, she shrank away, and when he again became delirious and rejected his restorative and went on speaking wildly and incoherently, mingling names, words of hate and words of love and words of dreary despair, she burst into a sudden passion of excited tears and called Miranda to come immediately and relieve her. She evidently was not fit to be a calm nurse to the stranger: a fact sufficiently curious, since her temperament was quite the nursely one. But perhaps she was too much concerned for her protégé. The afternoon hastened away. The sufferer seemed momentarily improving. He had now fallen into a quiet sleep. Mr. Dempster appeared to ask the plans of his guest--to go or not to go? Miss Sullivan said she felt that she could be of no real service; she was, of course, much interested in the final recovery of her waif, but she could have news of him from Miranda; she ought not to detain her friends at Loggerly. What she did not say, in spite of a somewhat evident anxiety to find reasons for departure, was that she did not dare trust herself to encounter the stranger on his recovery, so shaken was she by certain inward tremors, so prostrated in strength and spirits--the result, no doubt, of her efforts in his behalf. An instinct of self-protection urged to flight. She gave the word, “Go.” White Socks and the buggy came to the door. Dan’l stepped forward with a bunch of hollyhocks, pink, yellow, and purple. He got a very unexpected kiss--unexpected by giver and receiver. “Thank you for your boots, Dan’l. I could not have gone a step without them.” There was a very blushing Dan’l, a very pensive Dan’l, a very manly Dan’l, a very like-a-first-lover Dan’l, about the premises that evening. He doubled his fists and said “Durn it!” very often, but always ended with a pleased smile. Dan’l was having his first glimpses into fairyland; his world seemed enchanted, as he wandered out through the ferns to sunset--strawberries his pretence. Everyone was sorry to part with Miss Sullivan. With Miranda especially, her adieux were most affectionate. These two had been engaged in the romantic duty of saving a life. “Write me every day, Miranda,” were Miss Sullivan’s last words, and she quite blushed as she uttered them. “Write me every day and tell me how he does.”