the anthracite stove. Then she turned out the gas and with a firm step made her way up the creaking stairs of the house which she owned, free of all mortgage and encumbrance, made so by her own efforts. She had decided upon a course of action. She would say nothing and perhaps by the day Philip arrived he would have been made to see the light by Naomi. Meanwhile his return could be explained by his hardships, his illness and his wound. The poor boy was a hero.
On the way up she remembered that she must reprove Essie about the letter, though, as it turned out it was perhaps just as well that she hadn't seen it until after the meeting, for she could scarcely have read one of Philip's letters with a whole heart knowing all the while that he was already on his way home, fleeing from the hardships the Lord saw fit to impose. Still Essie must be reproved: she had committed an error.
Again she fell to racking her brain for some explanation of what had happened to Philip. He had never been unruly, undutiful or ungrateful save during that period when he had been friends with Mary Conyngham and it couldn't, of course, be Mary Conyngham's bad influence, since she hadn't seen him in years and was a woman now with two children and a husband buried only the day before yesterday.
While she undressed she reflected that she had had a hard day full of cares, and she thanked God for that immense vitality which never allowed weariness to take possession of her. She had fought before, and now, with God's help, she would fight again, this time to save her boy from the heritage of his father's blood. When she had brushed her short, thin hair and donned
