around her waist, and her head lay on his shoulder. The curtain of the
evening slowly fell, and in slumbers I drew her thoughts close to my
heart, Aunt Hildy's "God help us" floating like music through my
dreams.




CHAPTER IX.

THE NEW FAITH.


"Emily will help me!" Oh, how those words haunted me! I would help her;
yes, if I could, but when should I ever stop making blunders, when
should I lose the impetuous nature that drove me too often on the beach
of thought, with shipwrecked sentences that fell far short of my
thought, and expressed nothing of my real self. Why was it, as I grew
older, I came to realize, that if I had been born a little later, it
would have been easier? I was standing on tip-toe trying in vain to
touch that which lay beyond my reach; of course I must be constantly
falling, and the security of growth I could not then wait for. I must
keep reaching and falling, covering myself with disappointments, while
in the hearts if not on the lips of those about me must rest the same
old words, "Emily did it."

Clara says I can do something, and having grown to feel that her words
were almost prophecy, I felt sure there was something ahead, and
repeated again and again, "Emily will do it." Mr. Benton was looking
beyond his depth, and still did not hesitate to try and swim across the