concerned her much more closely. She held her breath as this revelation flashed upon her, feeling as if she must cry out and call for help, she who was so composed and unexcitable. It seemed to Lucy, in her sudden alarm and ignorance, that he might die before her eyes. This, of course, was an entirely false alarm. Next morning he was exactly like himself again, no special feebleness in his aspect, and much energy in his mind. As soon as he got settled in his chair Mr. Trevor got his big manuscript out, took a fresh pen which Ford had mended for him, and began to work with great energy and pleasure. Never had he more enjoyed his work; he was putting on the corner-stone--finishing the fabric. It took him all the morning to put everything down as he had planned it. And it pleased him so much that he smiled and chuckled to himself as he wrote, and said special phrases over and over under his breath. All the morning through he sat at his table working at it, while little Jock occupied his habitual position stretched out upon the white rug before the fire, his shoulders raised a little, his head bent over his book. Jock was too much absorbed to be aware of anything that was going on. The book he had lighted upon that day was Defoe’s “History of the Plague,” and the little fellow was altogether given over to its weird fascinations. It was more entrancing even than “Robinson Crusoe.” Thus the child and the old man kept each other company for hours together; the one betraying his presence occasionally by a little flicker of two small blue legs from the white rug, and of the pages of his book, itself half buried in the silky whiteness; while the other chuckled and muttered as he wrote, delighted with himself and his latest conception. They were both living by the imagination, though in phases so different; the boy carried out of himself, lost in the wonderful dream-history which was so much, more real than anything else round him; the old man throwing himself forward into a future he should never see, enacting a dream-life, which was to be when his should be ended and over, but which in its visionary distance was also a thousand times more real than the dull day to which it gave a fictitious charm. When the clause was finished Mr. Trevor once more called up Ford, and made him acquainted with his new conception. Ford studied him attentively while he read it, but he also listened with benevolent attention; and he gave his approval to the new plan. Seven years! Ford was just about so much the junior of his friend and patron. He said to himself, as he listened, that by that time he would no longer care to have the responsibility of superintending Lucy’s actions; and he graciously concurred in the expediency of her liberation. “If she can not manage her own affairs at thirty or so she never will,” he said, “and I think, Mr. Trevor, that you’re in the right.