“You know, Mrs. Stoddard,” she said earnestly, “that I want to be told at once, if—­if there is any change.”

“I know, child,” the older woman replied, with a faraway look.  “We are in the Lord’s hands.  He taketh the young in their might, and He healeth them that are nigh unto death.  We can only wait His will.”

Agatha was the product of a different age and a different system of thought.  But she was still young, and the pressure of the hour revived in her some ghost of her Puritan ancestral faith, longing to become a reality in her heart again, if only for this dire emergency.  She turned, eager but painfully embarrassed, to Mrs. Stoddard, detaining her by a touch on her arm.

“But you said, Mrs. Stoddard,” she implored, “that the prayer of faith shall heal the sick.  And I have been praying, too; I have tried to summon my faith.  Do you believe that it counts—­for good?”

Mrs. Stoddard’s rapt gaze blessed Agatha.  Her faith and courage were of the type that rise according to need.  She drew nearer to her sanctuary, to the fountain of her faith, as her earthly peril waxed.  Her voice rang with confidence as she almost chanted:  “No striving toward God is ever lost, dear child.  He is with us in our sorrow, even as in our joy.”  Her strong hand closed over Agatha’s for a moment, and then her steady, slow steps sounded on the stairs.

Agatha went into the parlor, whose windows opened upon the piazza, and from there wandered down the low steps to the lawn.  It was growing dusk, a still, comfortable evening.  Over the lawn lay the indescribable freshness of a region surrounded by many trees and acres of grass.  Presently the old hound, Danny, came slowly from his kennel in the back yard, and paced the grass beside Agatha, looking up often with melancholy eyes into her face.  Here was a living relic of her mother’s dead friend, carrying in his countenance his sorrow for his departed master.  Agatha longed to comfort him a little, convey to him the thought that she would love him and try to understand his nature, now that his rightful master was gone.  She talked softly to him, calling him to her but not touching him.  Back and forth they paced, the old dog following closer and closer to Agatha’s heels.

Back of the house was a path leading diagonally across to the wall which separated Parson Thayer’s place from the meeting-house.  The dog seemed intent on following this path.  Agatha humored him, climbed the low stile and entered the churchyard.  As the hound leaped the stile after her, he wagged his tail and appeared almost happy.  Agatha remembered that Sallie had told her, on the day of her arrival, of the dog, and how he was accustomed to walk every evening with his master.  Doubtless they sometimes walked here, among the silent company assembled in the churchyard; and the minister’s silent friend was now having the peculiar satisfaction of doing again what he had once done with his master.  Thus the little acre of the dead had its claim on life, and its happiness for throbbing hearts.