“This will never do. If I die, I’ll die game,” he said at last, and rousing up and pulling himself together he walked very steadily to his house, finding both his wife and Louie waiting for him with a tempting little lunch on the dining-room table. “Service was either very long, or you have been somewhere. It is nearly ten o’clock,” Louie said, as she gave him the cup of cocoa which he usually had on Sunday nights after church. “I’ve been somewhere,” he said, taking the cocoa and compelling himself to eat and to talk and seem natural, and when lunch was over, he asked Louie to sing him something before she retired. “What shall it be?” she said, seating herself at the piano. “Oh, anything,” he answered. “Or, yes, I think I’d like ‘Abide with me; fast falls the eventide; The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide.’ That will suit my case.” Louie did not hear the last remark, and her sweet, clear voice rang out in the evening air with the song her father had chosen. Sometimes he sang with her, but now he only whispered to himself, “Yes, the darkness deepens, and it is so dark, and I don’t believe the Lord would abide with me if I asked him to. It’s too late for that.” It was almost a prayer, and whether God heard or not there stole over the wretched man a sense of quiet and rest. The tension of his nerves relaxed. His head drooped, and when Louie finished singing and turned towards him, she saw that he was asleep. “Poor, tired father,” she said, rousing him very gently, while he looked at her in a bewildered kind of way and asked, “Is it to-morrow yet, and has the mail come?” “Almost to-morrow, as it is nearly eleven, and time you were in bed. Mother went long ago,” Louie replied. He was fully awake now, and getting up from his chair he stooped over Louie to give her the good-night kiss which he never omitted. “God bless you, daughter,” he said, putting his hands on her shoulders and looking her steadily in the face; “God bless you, and whatever happens, remember I thought only of your happiness and your mother’s. Good-night.” He kissed her again, and went slowly to his room, while Louie looked after him wonderingly. “Something is the matter. He is not well. I must speak to mother in the morning and have him see a doctor,” she thought, as she, too, went to her room and was soon asleep, with no suspicion of what the morrow was to bring. Mr. Grey could not sleep. There was work for him to do, and it must be done early, before the town was awake.