A soft, silver, "swimming sound" floated through the room. It was the clock upon the mantel sending out tones of time-hours. I looked up. It was eleven of the clock. "I must have fallen asleep," I thought, and threw off the folds of a shawl which I surely left on the sofa over there when I seated myself in this chair. My head was upon a pillow, downy and white, instead of the green vale of chair in which I had laid it down. I sprang up. There was little of lamp-light in the room. I saw something that looked marvellously like somebody, near the sofa. It was Katie, my good little friend Katie. She was sitting on a footstool with her head upon her hands, and, poor, tired child! fast asleep. I awoke her. "Who covered me up, Katie?" I asked. "Mr. Abraham," said Katie; and her waking senses came back. "And how did the pillow get under my head?" "Mr. Abraham said 'he was sorry that you had come.' You looked very white in your sleep, and he said 'you wouldn't wake up'; so I lifted your head just a mite, and he fixed the pillow under it. He told me to stay here until you awoke." "Which I have most decidedly done, Katie," I said; and I fully determined to take no more naps in this house. How could it have happened? I accounted for the fact in the most reasonable way I knew,--I, who rejoice in being reasonable,--by thinking it occurred in consequence of my long watchfulness, and sombreness of thought and soul. "I am sorry that you didn't wake me," I said to Katie, as she moved the chairs in the room to their respective places. With the most childlike implicitness in the world, the little maid stood still and looked at me. "I _couldn't_, you know, Miss Percival, when Mr. Abraham told me not to," were the positive words she used in giving her reason. I forgave Katie, and wondered what the secret of this man's commanding power could be, as on this Saturday night. I left the world, and went up to take my last watch with the convalescing lady. Her brother was with her. He looked a little surprised, when I went in; but the cloud of anger had gone away: folded it up he had, I fancied, all ready to shake out again upon the slightest provocation; and I did not care to see its folds waving around me, so I did not speak to him. Miss Axtell seemed pleased to see me; said "she trusted that this would be the last occasion on which she should require night-care." Her beauty was lovely now. A roseate hue was over her complexion: a little of the old fever rising, I suppose it must have been. "I've been talking with Abraham," she said, when I spoke of it. Why should a conversation with her brother occasion return of fever? Perhaps it was not that, but the mention of the fact, which increased the glow wonderfully. Mr. Axtell bade his sister good-night. "You will do it to-morrow, Abraham?" she asked, as he was going from the room. "I will think about it to-night, and give you my decision in the morning, Lettie."