All at once a new thought thrilled her stupor. She heard the stroke of three, and the boy was still alive! The ungovernable hope shook her back to sensation. She told herself that the hope was wild, fantastic, that she would be mad to harbour it, but excitement shivered in her; she was strung with the intensity of what she hesitated to own. Every second that might bring the end and yet withheld it, fanned the hope feebly; the passage of each slow, dragging minute stretched suspense more taut. She dreaded the quiver of her lashes that veiled his face from view, as if the spark of life might vanish as her eyelids fell. Between eternities, the distant clock rang forth the quarters of the hour across the sleeping town, and at every quarter she gasped "Thank God!" and wondered would she thank Him by the next. Hour trailed into hour. The boy lingered still. Haggard, she tended and she watched. The dreariness of daybreak paled the blind before the bed. The blind grew more transparent, and hope trembled on. There was the stir of morning, movement in the street; dawn touched them wanly, and hope held her yet. And sunrise showed him breathing peacefully once more--and then she knew that Heaven had worked a miracle and the child would live. * * * * * Among the staff that case is cited now and still the nurses tell how Mary Brettan saved his life. The local _Examiner_ gave the matter a third of a column, headed "Heroism of a Hospital Nurse." And, cut down to five lines, it was mentioned in the London papers. Mr. Collins, of Pattenden's, glanced at the item, having despatched the youth of the prodigious yawn with a halfpenny, and--remembering how the surname was familiar--wondered for a moment what the woman was doing who could never sell their books. It was later in the morning that Carew entered the hospital, as Kincaid crossed the hall. The porter heard the doctor's answer to a stammered question: "Your child is out of danger. I'm sorry to say Nurse Brettan risked her life for him." Then the visitor started, and stopped short hysterically, and the doctor moved by, with his jaw set hard. To Mary he had said little. He was confronted by a recovery that it had been impossible to foresee, but his predominant emotion was terror of its cost. From the Matron she heard of Carew's gratitude, and received his message of entreaty to be allowed to see her. It was not delivered, however, till she woke, and then he had gone; and by the morrow her reluctance to have an interview had deepened. She contented herself with the note that he sent: one written to say that he "could not write--that in a letter he was unable to find words." She read it very slowly, and it drooped to her lap, and she sat gazing at the wall. She brushed the mist from her eyes, and read the lines again, and yet again --long after she knew them all by heart.