Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental.

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Published by Barbour Publishing, Inc., P.O. Box 719, Uhrichsville, Ohio 44683, www.barbourbooks.com

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Printed in the United States of America.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

About the Author

Chapter 1

1920s
Eastern United States

The room was very still except for the ticking of the little clock, which stood on the table in the hall and seemed to Marion Warren to be tolling out the seconds one by one.

She sat by her father’s bedside, where she had been all day, only rising to give him his medicine or to tiptoe into the hall to answer some question of her sister-in-law’s or to speak to the doctor before he went out.

The doctor had been there three times since morning. He had come in the last time without being sent for. Marion felt sure that he knew the end was not far off, although he had not definitely said so. As she looked at the gray shadows in the beloved face, her own heart told her that her dear father had not much longer now to stay.

She would not call him back if she could to the suffering he had endured for the last two years, following an accident at his factory. She knew he desired to be through with it. He had often spoken about how good it would be to feel that the suffering was all over. Yet she had hoped against hope that he might be cured and given back to her. She had nursed him so gladly, and loved her task, even when sometimes her head ached and her back ached and her slender arms ached and her flesh fairly cried out for rest. Her father was almost her idol. He and she had always understood one another and had had the same dreams and ambitions. He had encouraged her in taking more time for reading and study than her more practical mother had thought wise. He had talked with her of life and what we were put on this earth to do. He had hunted out books to please and interest her. She had read aloud to him for hours at a time, and they had discussed what she read. And after her mother died he had been both mother and father to her. How was she going to live without her father?

She had known, of course, since he was first taken ill that there was a possibility that he might not get well. But he had been so cheery and hopeful always, never complaining, never taking it as a foregone conclusion that he was out of active life forever, and always saying at night: “Well, daughter, I feel a little better tonight, I think. Perhaps the doctor will let me sit up in the morning. Wouldn’t that be great?”

Yet he had also lived and talked as if he might always be going to heaven tomorrow. Once he had said, “Well, I’m satisfied to live to be a very old man, if the Lord wills, or to go right now whenever He calls.”

These memories went pacing before the thoughts of the girl like weird shadows as she sat waiting in the darkened room, watching the dear white face. She had had no sleep since the night before last when her father had grown suddenly so very much worse. At intervals she wondered whether she were not perhaps a little light-headed now.

Marion’s brother, Tom, was sitting at the foot of the bed by the open hall door. He had been sitting there for an hour and a half. Occasionally he cleared his throat with a rasping sound. She knew he must be suffering, of course, yet somehow she felt that she alone was the one who was being bereaved. Tom was older and was not what he called “sentimental.” He had never understood the deep attachment between Marion and her father. He sometimes had called it partiality, but the girl always knew her father had not been partial. He loved Tom deeply. Yet he had never been able to make a friend and comrade of his practical, cheery, and somewhat impatient son.