figure, sloe-black eyes, quick in moving, curly head, and dark, clear
cheeks, carnation-tinted, would have been thought by many quite as
charming a specimen of American girlhood as the stately pale brunette who
swayed her brother's affections.

"Come for a walk, chicken! It is much too pretty a night to go indoors,"
he said.

"Yes, and furnish ears for Madeline's praises, with a few more reflected
compliments for pay, perhaps," she replied, contemptuously. "Besides,"
she added, "I must go into the house and keep father company. I only came
out to cool off after baking the cake. You'd better come in too. These
moonlight nights always make him specially sad, you know."

The brother and sister had been left motherless not long before, and
Laura, in trying to fill her mother's place in the household, so far as
she might, was always looking out that her father should have as little
opportunity as possible to brood alone over his companionless condition.




CHAPTER II.


That same night toward morning Henry suddenly awoke from a sound sleep.
Drowsiness, by some strange influence, had been completely banished from
his eyes, and in its stead he became sensible of a profound depression of
spirits. Physically, he was entirely comfortable, nor could he trace to
any sensation from without either this sudden awakening or the mental