The little girl lay in a close room. Her curls were tangled on the pillow and her thin, brown arms tossed on the hot counterpane. By her side was a glass of some dark medicine, and her black eyes held more of rebellion than of fever as she gazed at the stranger.
He leaned over her with a smile, smoothing her wrists lightly, with slow, downward touches, and whispering in her ear. The sound of the singing below came through the door ajar, and the child listened to her visitor as if he were telling her a wonderful tale.
"Open the window," he said, after a while, to the mother, pulling the sheet softly over the child's shoulders, "the air to-night is full of silver threads which draw away the fever."
Then he threw the black draught out of the window. And the child, watching him, laughed a little.
"It is the wrong medicine," said he. "Bring me paper and pen."
He wrote by the light of the flickering candle, hiding the words with his other hand: Fortune favour Faith.
Then he slipped the crooked sixpence into the paper, folded it carefully, tucking the ends one into the other, and marked it with a cross.
"Hold it tight," he said to the child, closing the fingers of her right hand upon the little packet. "It will let you into the Garden of Good Dreams. And now your carriage is ready, and now your horses are trotting, gently, gently, quickly, softly along the white moon-road to the Land of Nod. Will you go—are you going—are you gone?"
Her eyelids drooped and fell, and she turned on her right side with a sigh, thrusting her brown fist under the pillow. Harcourt drew the mother to the door.
"Hush," he whispered; "leave the window wide. Your Faith holds an ancient potent charm, thousands of years old, better than all medicines. Do not speak of it to any one. If you open it, you will lose it. Let her sleep with it so, and bring it me on the morrow."