My beautiful fair-haired baby with her exquisite clothes was no more, those days were like a dream that had passed. The first nine years of her adoring mother’s lavish attention and the later ten years of grueling, slaving work to keep her clothed and fed, had alike fallen away and were as if they had never been. My last sight of her was as she piled her belongings in the back of a hired buggy and drove off to the railroad station. “Oh, how cruel, how cruel life has been to me!” I moaned as the buggy pulled away. Closing the door, I started on foot up town, hardly conscious that I wanted to be able to pray alone in the Church of the Annunciation on Seventh Street. Lillie’s buggy was disappearing and now I needed the strength of prayer and the reassurance of the Virgin’s beatific smile. As I knelt alone in the white interior praying ardently, I gazed heavenward at the imitation frescoes, replicas of classics pasted to the wall. Slowly courage returned to me. I must still carry on—for Tabor’s name and for Silver’s future. That thought came to me stronger and stronger, bathed in the white light of a real revelation. Gradually the almost trance-like state, that I must have been in for a long time, subsided and I came back to the sharp realities of life. “I wonder who all those saints are?” I mused to myself, again glancing at the ceiling as I rose to go. I knew very little about spiritual matters except for occasional readings in the Bible and I determined I should know more. So before trudging the mile and a half home, I headed for the library. “This will be what you want, I think,” the very nice girl said in answer to my query, and handed me “The Lives of the Saints.” From that day on, it was my favorite book. I read and re-read it throughout the years, supplementing its message with daily chapters from the Bible. Meanwhile Silver was my pride and joy. When I got back to our house, I told her about Lillie’s abrupt departure, trying to remain calm and self-controlled as I narrated the episode. “Good riddance to bad rubbish!” Silver answered impudently and threw her arms around my neck. “Don’t let her hurt your feelings, Mama. She’ll he sorry. When I’m a great authoress and you’re a rich society woman in Denver, she’ll come running back. Then she’ll think differently about the Tabor name.” For some time Silver had had an ambition to write and was already contributing extra poems to her English work in eighth grade. Now I hugged her gratefully for her sympathy about Lillie and her encouragement for the future. She had her father’s coloring and much of his character. How proud he would have been of her if he could have seen her at that moment! “Yes, yes, I’m sure you’re right, Silver. Lillie will be sorry and come back—and with your talent, you will make the Tabor name once again a thing of lustre!”