The autumn began to deepen.  The pines accentuated their solemnity, and out on the roadways the hazel bushes and the sumac changed to canary, to russet, and to crimson.  For days together the sky would be cloudless, and even in the dead of night the vault seemed to retain its splendor.  There are curious cloths woven on Persian and on Turkish looms which appear to the casual eye to be merely black, but which held in sunlight show green and blue, purple and bronze, like the shifting colors on a duck’s back.  Kate, pacing back and forth in the night after hours of concentrated labor,—­labor which could be performed only when her father was resting,—­noted such mysterious and evasive hues in her Northern sky.  Never had she seen heavens so triumphant.  True, the stars shone with a remote glory, but she was more inspired by their enduring, their impersonal magnificence, than she could have been by anything relative to herself.

A year ago, had she been so isolated, she might have found herself lonely, but it was quite different now.  She possessed links with the active world.  There were many who wanted her—­some for small and some for great things.  She felt herself in the stream of life; it poured about her, an invisible thing, but strong and deep.  Sympathy, understanding, encouragement, reached her even there in her solitude and heartened her.  Weary as she often was physically, drained as she could not but be mentally, her heart was warm and full.

October came and went bringing little change in Dr. Barrington’s condition.  It did not seem advisable to move him.  Rest and care were the things required; and the constant ministrations of a physician would have been of little benefit.  Kate prayed for a change; and it came, but not as she had hoped.  One morning she went to her father to find him terribly altered.  It was as if some blight had fallen upon him in the night.  His face was gray in hue, his pulse barely fluttering, though his eyes were keener than they had been, as if a sudden danger had brought back his old force and comprehension.  Even the tone in which he addressed her had more of its old-time quality.  It was the accent of command, the voice he had used as a physician in the sick-room, though it was faint.

“Send for Hudson,” he said.  “We’ll be needing him, Kate.  The fight’s on.  Don’t feel badly if we fail.  You’ve done your best.”

It was six hours before the physician arrived from Milwaukee.

“I couldn’t have looked for anything like this,” he said to Kate.  “I thought he was safe—­that six months’ rest would see him getting about again.”