When Saxon and Mrs Shelf were allowed to visit Annie she did not know them. Her delirium ran high, and for days and weeks she lay truly at the point of death. All that could be done for her was, however, done. She had special nurses and a private ward; and at long last there came a day when, in answer to anguished prayers and bitter sorrow, a girl crept slowly back from the shores of death and lay truly like the shadow of her former self high and dry above danger and on her way to recovery. Day after day, slowly, very slowly, almost imperceptibly, her strength returned, until at last there came an hour when she recognised her old friends. Then by degrees she returned to health and strength. It was three months later, and all the events which make up this story seemed to have passed into a distant part of Annie Brooke's life, when she and John Saxon had an earnest talk together. Annie was well once more, but so changed that few would have known her for the laughing and almost beautiful girl of the early part of that same year. She had said very little of the past since her recovery, but on this occasion she made a clean breast of everything to John Saxon. "I am sorry," she said. "I knew at last what repentance meant when I passed into that awful state of delirium and when I felt myself face to face with an angry God. But I have got something in my nature, John, which makes me tremble for the future. I am very wicked still. What can I do with my life?" Then John Saxon made a proposal to her. "Will you and Mrs Shelf and our friend Sam Freeman, who is an excellent fellow at heart and the very person for a colonist, take passage with me to Canada? You can start a new life there, Annie. You have enough money to buy a little land, and Sam Freeman is the very man to help you. I myself will stay near you for the first year, and you can start your Canadian life in the house of a cousin of mine, who, I know, will be only too glad to receive you. In a new country, dear," continued her cousin, "one can have a clear horizon, a wider view, a better chance. Take up your cross bravely, Annie; never forget that you have sinned, but also that you have repented." "Do they know at the school?" she asked in a whisper. "Yes, everything is known; Priscilla told the truth." "You won't tell me what they said?" "There is no need to tell you. Your punishment, perhaps, is not to know. You have done with Mrs Lyttelton's school. Turn your face towards the West, dear. Think of the new life and the new, clean, fresh country." "Yes, oh yes, I will go--I will go." "Then that is settled," said Saxon, "and I will make immediate preparations."