"I don't know," she confessed frankly. "I am not sure that I ever tried to account for them; I suppose I have swallowed them whole, as you say I have swallowed my religion." "Well, you believe in them, anyway," he said, "and that makes it easier to hit what I'm aiming at. Do you reckon they stopped short in the Apostles' time?" "I don't know that, either," she admitted. "You ought to know it, if you're consistent," he said, bluntly dogmatic. "Any answer to any prayer would be a miracle." "Would it? I never happened to think of it that way." "It certainly would. You chop a tree in two and it falls; that's cause and effect. If you ask God to make it stand up after it's cut in two, and it does stand, that's a miracle." "You are the queerest boy," she commented. "I ran over here just for a minute to ask how your mother is, and you won't tell me." "I'm coming to that," he rejoined gravely. "But I wanted to get this other thing straightened out first. Now tell me this: did you pray for my mother last night, like you said you would?" Once again he was offending the guardian of the inner shrines, and her heightened color was not all the reflection of the ruddy firelight. "You can be so barbarously personal when you try, Tom," she protested. And then she added: "But I did." "Well, the miracle was wrought. Early this morning mother came to herself and asked for something to eat. Doctor Williams has been here, and now he tells us all the things he wouldn't tell us before. It was some little clot in one of the veins or arteries of the brain, and nine times out of ten there is no hope." "O Tom!--and she will get well again?" "She has more chances to-day of getting well than she had last night of dying--so the doctor says. But it's a miracle, just the same." "I'm so glad! And now I really must go home." And she got up. "No, sit down; I'm not through with you yet. I want to know what you think about promises." She smiled and pushed her chair back from the soft-coal blaze in the fireplace. "Don't you know you are a perfect 'old man of the sea,' Tom?" "That's all right; but tell me: is a bad promise better broken or kept?" "I am sure I couldn't say without knowing the circumstances. Tell me all about it," and she resigned herself to listen. "It was at daybreak this morning. I was alone with mother, looking at her lying there so still and helpless--dead, all but the little flicker of breath that seemed just about ready to go out. It came over me all of a sudden that I couldn't disappoint her, living or dead; that I'd have to go on and be what she has always wanted me to be. And I promised her." "But she couldn't hear you?" "No; it was before she came to herself. Nobody heard me but God; and I reckon He wasn't paying much attention to anything I said." "Why do you say that?" "Because--well, because it wasn't the kind of a promise that makes the angels glad. I said I'd go on and do it, if I had to be a hypocrite all the rest of my life."