It is to save the boy, my father, my mother, and me!" Not once in her terrible recital had the girl's voice broke.

And now, as if bowing herself in silent prayer, she kneeled beside the bed and laid her head close to the baby's.

Philip stood motionless, his unseeing eyes staring straight through the log walls and the black night to a city a thousand miles away.

He understood now.

Josephine's story was not the strangest thing in the world after all.