sometimes sleep for hours upon his arm, with one hand clasped in Aunt Barbara’s, and the other held by Andy.  At other times, when the fever was on, no arm availed to hold her as she tossed from side to side, talking of things at which a stranger would have marveled, and which made Richard’s heart ache to its very core.  At times she was a girl in Chicopee, and all the past as connected with Frank Van Buren was lived over again; then she would talk of Richard, and shudder as she recalled the dreary, dreadful day when the honeysuckles were in blossom, and he came to make her his wife.

“It was wrong, all wrong.  I did not love him then,” she said, “nor afterward, on the prairie, nor anywhere, until I went away, and found what it was to live without him.”

“And do you love him now?” Richard asked her once when he sat alone with her.

There was no hesitancy on her part, no waiting to make up an answer.  It was ready on her lips, “Yes, oh, yes!” and the weak arms lifted themselves up and were wound around his neck with a pressure almost stifling.  How much of this was real Richard could not tell, but he accepted it as such, and waited impatiently for the day when the full light of reason should return and Ethie be restored to him.  There was but little of her past life which he did not learn from her ravings, and so there was less for her to tell him when at last the fever abated, and his eyes met hers with a knowing, rational expression.  Andy was alone with her when the change first came.  The rain, which had fallen so steadily, was over, and out upon the river the sunlight was softly falling.  At Andy’s earnest entreaty, Richard had gone for a little exercise in the open air, and was walking slowly up and down the broad piazza, while Aunt Barbara slept, and Andy kept his vigils by Ethelyn.  She, too, was sleeping quietly, and Andy saw the great drops of perspiration standing upon her brow and beneath her hair.  He knew it was a good omen, and on his knees by the bedside, with his face in his hands, he prayed aloud, thanking God for restoring Ethelyn to them, and asking that they might all be taught just how to make her happy.  A faint sound between a moan and a sob roused him and, looking up, he saw the great tears rolling down Ethie’s cheeks, while her lips moved as if they would speak to him.

“Andy, dear old Andy! is it you, and are you glad to have me back?” she said, and then all Andy’s pent-up feelings found vent in a storm of tears and passionate protestations of love and tenderness for his darling sister.

She remembered how she came there, and seemed to understand why Andy was there, too; but the rest was a little confused.  Was Aunt Barbara there, or had she only dreamed it?

“Aunt Barbara is here,” Andy said, and then, with the same frightened, anxious look her face had so often worn during her illness, Ethie said:  “Somebody else has sat by me and held my head and hands, and kissed me!  Andy, tell me—­was that Richard?—­and did he kiss me, and is he glad to find me?”