He outlined for himself a new, thoroughly wholesome mode of life, and in half an hour's heart-to-heart conference convinced his doctor-friend that more had been accomplished in two months than could have been promised at the end of the six months planned. So the new Francis Kent was told to go back and make a new home for his wife and the new baby. Years have passed--blessed years in the old mansion. There is no hint of cirrhosis of the liver. There has never been a drop of anything alcoholic served in that house since his return. There are two healthy chaps of boys; there is a wonderfully happy woman; there is a fine, manly man, the respected and efficient president of an influential bank. Patient, wise hands carefully untangled the knotted snarl. The thread was unbroken. CHAPTER XV FROM FEAR TO FAITH Thirty some years ago a baby girl came into a Virginia home. Her birth was a matter of family indifference; not specially needed, she was not particularly wanted. Her father, reared in a small town, having attained only moderate success as combination bookkeeper, cashier and clerk in a general store, could not enthuse over an arrival which would increase the burden of family expense. He was a man of good Virginia stock, not fired by large ambitions. An ubiquitous cud of fine-cut, flattening his cheek and saturating his veins, possibly explains his life of semicontent--for tobacco is a sedative. The mother was a washed-out, frail-looking reminder of youthful attractions, essentially of the nervous type. She was not without pride in her Cavalier stock and the dash of Cavalier blood it brought. The elder sister had none of her mother. Aspiring socially, she was reserved, pedantic, platitudinizing, thoroughly self-sufficient. She finished well up in her class in a small, woman's so-called "college" and lived with such prudence and exercised such foresight that, in spite of her Methodist rearing, she wedded the young, local, Episcopal rector, and, childless but still self-sufficient, "lived happy ever after."