vast energy and an overwhelming optimism, she had begun to plan the future of Ellen long before the girl was born.
Long before midnight the two boys, under the gentle urgence of their mother, had drifted sleepily to bed. Ellen remained, still playing, almost mournfully now with a kind of moving and tragic despair. Beyond the frozen windows the wind howled wildly and the snow piled against the wall of the house. Mrs. Tolliver darned savagely, with short, passionate stitches, because the thing of which she lived in constant terror had returned to come between her soul and that of Ellen.
On the great sofa, her husband snored gently.
At midnight she rose and, poking the ashes of the fire, she said to Ellen, "It's time we were all asleep. Lock up and I'll get papa to bed."
The transference of Mr. Tolliver from the sofa to his bed was nightly an operation lasting many minutes. When Ellen returned, her mother still stood by the sofa urging her husband gently to stir himself.
"Please, papa," she said, "come along to bed. It's after midnight."
There was a series of final plaints and slowly the gentle Mr. Tolliver sat up, placed his feet on the floor, yawned and made his way sleepily to the stairway. The mother turned off the gas and the room suddenly was bathed in the warm, mellow glow of the dying fire. Ellen, breathing against the frozen window pane, cleared a tiny space to look out upon the world. It stretched before her, white and mysterious, beckoning and inscrutable. And suddenly she saw far down the street the figure of a cab drawn by a skinny horse which leaned black against the slanting snow within the halo of a distant street lamp.
The mother joined her, watching the cab for an instant and murmuring at length, "I wonder who it could be at this time of night."
"I know," said Ellen softly. "It's Mr. Murdock. He was
