The elder Mrs. Gano could have put up with these crude evidences of a share in the family bias, but not with her granddaughter's growing unsubmissiveness, her chronic mutiny against the smallest restraint. The child had been taught early to look upon herself as a very potent factor in the family life. She observed that arrangements that failed to meet with her approval were often altered. Her mother's sternest form of discipline had been to argue with her. More than one servant had been dismissed in obedience to Miss Val's demands. There was the case of the lady house-keeper from Boston, who, in addition to regular duties, undertook also to teach Val--a learned maiden lady with shaky nerves and a passion for history. It was supposed she left so suddenly because of illness in her family, until Val admitted that she had threatened the lady with the carving-knife after dinner one day. "What on earth made you do that?" said the child's father, horrified. "She talked too much about the British," replied Val, calmly. "What!" "I said the Americans were just as brave. I could see she didn't think so, so I got the carvin'-knife and--well, you know, she just caught the three-o'clock train." The June of that year was intensely hot, but young Mrs. Gano was too ill to be carried out of the stifling city. Val was sent into the country to some cousins "for a change"--for whose change was not insisted upon. She was not brought back till the day after her mother's funeral. It was a strange and terrible time. For once she was passive and subdued. If the servants had not already remarked on her hard-heartedness, she would have cried herself ill. But she was full of a dull resentment as well as pain. At the time she was sent away she had gathered, as a quick-witted child does--Heaven knows how!--that her mother was dangerously ill. During that time in the country she had prayed for her recovery as she never prayed before or after, as none but the passionate-hearted ever pray. Night after night, when the light had been put out, and the others had gone to sleep, Val would get out of bed and kneel down at the side beseeching God to save her mother's life, and making solemn compacts with the Lord of Hosts. She would be so good, and build a church, too, in memory of this answer to prayer; she would be a nun, and serve God all her days, if He would spare her mother. She pointed out how easy it was for the All-Powerful to do this little thing. She wasn't waiting till it would require a Lazarus miracle, she was asking Him in good time. He had only to let the doctors know what would cure her. But she, Val Gano, would recognize in the recovery a direct answer to prayer, and she would keep her vows. She remembered a sermon she had heard on mountain-moving faith. Hers should be perfect and unfaltering. She knew God would answer this one prayer; she saw herself already in her nun's black habit, and began to say her last farewell to the world, to the