Of Lawson Dosia had heard only such vague rumors as had sifted through the letters written by Lois; he had been reported as going on in his old way in the mining-camps, drifting from one to another. She heard nothing more now. He was the only one who had really loved her up here, except Lois, who loved her now. Dosia had slipped into her now position of sister and helper as if she had always filled it. She was not an outsider any more; she _belonged_. [Illustration: _After this he only appeared in the village street guarded on either side by a female Snow_] As she sat bending over Lois now, her attitude was instinct with something high-mindedly lovely. The Dosia who had only wanted to be loved, now felt—after a year of trial and conflict with death—that she only wanted, and with the same youthful intensity, to be very good, even though it seemed sometimes to that same youthfulness a strange and tragic thing that it should be all she wanted. The mysterious, fathomless depression of youth, as of something akin to unknown primal depths of loneliness, sometimes laid its chill hand on her heart; but when Dosia “said her prayers,” she got, child-fashion, very near to a Someone who brought her an intimate, tender comfort of resurrection and of life. “I don’t think Justin seems well,” she repeated, Lois, looking up at her with calmly expressionless eyes from her pillow, having taken no notice of the remark. “He has changed, I think, even in the ten days since I came.” “He has something on his mind,” assented Lois, with a note of languor in her voice, “I suppose it’s the business—I made up my mind to ask him about it to-night; he has been out every evening lately, and I hardly see him at all before he goes off in the morning, now that I don’t get down to breakfast.” “Oh, he gave me a message for you this morning,” cried Dosia, with compunction at having so far forgotten it. “He said that Mr. Larue had come in to inquire about you yesterday; he is going to send you a basket of strawberries and roses from his place at Collingswood to-morrow.” “Eugene Larue!” Lois’ lips relaxed into a pleased curve, a slight color touched her cheek. “That was very nice of him; he knew I’d like to look forward to getting them. Strawberries and roses!” “I met Mr. Girard in the street to-day, he asked after you,” continued Dosia, with the feeling that if she spoke of him she might get that tiresome, insistent image of him from before her eyes. “Bailey Girard? Yes; he has a room at the Snows’. Billy’s out West.” “So I’ve heard,” said Dosia. It was one of the strange and melancholy ironies of life that the man of all others whom she had desired to meet should be thrown daily in her pathway now, after that desire was gone! “You’d better not talk any more now, Lois; you look tired, it’s time for you to take a little rest. I’ll see to the children, I hope baby will stay asleep. Let me put this coverlet over you. Shall I pull down the shades?”