XIVTHE FIRE-ESCAPE

“‘It means, Lammy Lane, that the Lord don’t forget the orphan.’”

“The meaning of that letter is what Abiram Slocum burnt up his cross-road house to conceal, which he wouldn’t hev done if it was of no account.” And Mrs. Lane poured out her suspicions and ideas concerning the matter.

******

At the supper-table that night Mrs. Lane repeated Abiram Slocum’s message to her husband, and he, rubbing his chin with a troubled air, replied, “Truth be told, Lauretta Ann, owin’ to the burnin’ of that furniture there isn’t a cent left to pay that claim, and I do hate to have poor O’More held up as an insolvent around here for sixty dollars, ’count o’ Bird. He was a good-natured, harmless sort o’ feller, enjoyin’ of himself as he went, very much like I’d be if you hadn’t taken up with me, Mis’is Lane.”

At this compliment Mrs. Lane blushed like a girl and murmured something about all men bein’ the better for women’s handling, provided it was the right woman, which Mis’is Slocum wasn’t.

“Now as far as that sixty dollars goes, if it wasn’t owed to ’Biram Slocum, I’d undertake ter pay it myself, so as to get the receipt and settle everything square up and clean billed, but, by jinks, it sticks me to pay that low-down swindler.”

“Joshua Lane!” cried his wife, in a tragic tone, standing up and pointing her pudgy finger at him with such a jerk that it made him start as if it had been a bayonet, while she used the most grandiloquent language she could muster: “The estate of the late lamented Terence O’More does not owe Abiram Slocum a bent penny,and as to the receipt for the same, I’ll hand it to you this time to-morrow night, leastwise if it doesn’t blow a blizzard ’twixt now and then, or Mis’is Slocum turn ’Biram into pickled peppers by the sight of the face she wore home from the auction.”

“Come now, Lauretta Ann,” wheedled Joshua, “you ain’t minded of paying it, be ye? I’d think twice—that I would.”

“Pay!” snorted Lauretta. “Don’t I tell you there’s nothin’ owed?”

“You’re talkin’ an’ actin’ enigmas and charades. Not thet it’s anything new, but if I was you, I’d be mighty keerful how I baited ’Biram Slocum; he is too cute for most men, and he would take to the law for a heedless word jest now, he’s that riled about the wardrobe story leakin’ out and losing the fruit farm.”

“That’s all right, and don’t you fret, Joshua; if there is any law called in, it’ll be by me.” And pump and quiz as he might, not another word could he extract from his wife upon the subject.

******

Early the next morning Mrs. Lane harnessed the “colt,” which, though ten years old, still bore his youthful name, to the cutter, and after putting her egg-basket deep under the robe and depositingher satchel on top of it, turned up the hill road toward Northboro, waving her whip good-by to Lammy, who, seated in the big chair in his window, smiled at her, with his finger pressed to his lips, as if cautioning silence.

As the sleigh bells jingled and the “colt” loped easily along, Mrs. Lane leaned back as if the motion and jolly sound expressed her own feelings admirably, and the miles flew swiftly by.

When Northboro was reached, she drove to the stable where she always left her horse in unseasonable weather, but instead of carrying the familiar egg-basket into town, she stowed it away under the sleigh seat, and hanging her satchel securely on her arm, drew on her best gloves that she had brought in her pocket, and started up the main street at a vigorous trot. Coming to a gray stone building next the court-house, where many lawyers had offices, she read the various signs anxiously, and then spying that of Mr. Cole, opened the swinging outside door and climbed the two flights of stairs that led to it.

Mr. Cole greeted her pleasantly, for he had a very kindly feeling toward this generous-hearted woman; but when he heard her story and saw the legal-looking envelope, he became doubly interested. Untyingthe tape, he read the various papers through, one after the other, while Mrs. Lane watched his eagerness with evident satisfaction. When he had finished, he replaced the papers and tied them up deliberately before he said: “These papers appear to me to be of great importance to O’More’s daughter, though exactly what they amount to I cannot tell until I see the dates of certain mortgages and transfers on record in Milltown. Fortunately the attorney, Mr. King, who drew up the papers before he went to California four years ago, has returned on a visit, and I am to meet him in court this afternoon.”

“I suppose you know Bird hasn’t anything to pay what Joshua says they call the retainment fee, but if a little money ’ll help her get her rights, you may hold me good for it.”

“That will not be necessary,” said the lawyer, smiling, “for my client, Mr. Clarke, is as anxious to have the title to the Mill Farm cleared as you are, so in serving him I may be able to aid Bird. Slocum, the present owner, seems a slippery man at best. You know that the insurance company, for which I also happen to be the agent, withholds his claim because he gave the date of June 9 for his fire when it took place the 10th.”

At this Mrs. Lane’s eyes grew steelly bright, andshe moistened her lips nervously. Then Mr. Cole put the papers in his safe and closed the door with its mysterious lock, and Mrs. Lane breathed a sigh of relief and, asking him to write as soon as he had news, either good or bad, went carefully down the shallow marble stairs of the office building, for elevators she would have none of.

Once more in the street, she spied a bakery and, going in, ordered a cup of coffee and half a custard pie, which she ate with relish and then returned to the stable for the “colt” without doing any of her usual market-day trading.

It was only half-past eleven when Mrs. Lane, coming down the hill road, saw Laurelville lying before her in the valley, and five minutes later when she hitched the colt in front of the town-house, throwing the coon lap-robe over him in addition to his blanket.

The selectmen had been in consultation, and were now standing outside, making holes in the snow with their boot toes and finding it difficult to break away, after the usual manner of rural communities. Mrs. Lane nodded pleasantly and asked if every one else had gone home to dinner.

“Mostly,” replied First Selectman Penfield, “but Judge Ricker’s in his office, I reckon, and Slocum,he’s in the end room as ’cessor, waitin’ for folks to swear their taxes, for which they appear to be in no hurry.”

This was exactly the information Mrs. Lane wanted, and she walked directly down the corridor, this time firmly grasping the egg-basket and leaving the satchel outside.

Opening the door without knocking, she had entered, closed it, and seated herself opposite Abiram Slocum before he was aware of her presence, and do what he could, he was not able to control the slight start that her appearance gave him.

“Morning, marm,” he said formally, putting his thumbs in the armholes of his vest and puffing out his cheeks with importance; “want to swear your taxes?”

“Not to-day; Joshua always attends to that. I’ve jest dropped in ter get that receipt for the O’More rent, as Joshua intends settling the matter up with Judge Ricker this afternoon.”

“Very glad to hear it, Mrs. Joshua Lane; it saves me lots of trouble, and I hate to go to law unless required.” And he drew a blank form from a desk, which he filled in, signed, and was about to hand across the table, when he suddenly withdrew it, saying, “Well, where are the sixty dollars?”

“They was paid you June the 10th.”

“What!” shouted Abiram, really believing the woman to be crazy, and retreating behind the table.

“Just so; by that I mean all that good furniture you set fire to along with your house.”

Slocum turned ghastly white and almost staggered, but quickly recovering himself, he sprang forward furiously, and for a moment Mrs. Lane thought he was going to strike her, but glancing out the window she saw that Selectman Penfield was below, and this reassured her.

“I’ll have you arrested for slander as sure as my name’s Abiram Slocum,” he gasped, trying to get out the door in front of which she stood.

“I wouldn’t be too hasty; if you wait, you will hear more to get up that slander claim on, mostlike. Jest you go back and set down while I have my say, and if you want witnesses to it, Judge Ricker will step in, I’m sure, or Mr. Penfield either; they are both real handy. As you said yesterday,there’s underhand business been goin’ on in town if the light o’ truth could be let in, which I’m now doin’.”

So Abiram hesitated, and sank back into the chair, casting an uneasy look at his visitor, who proceeded to state her case both rapidly and clearly.

“’Twas Friday, the 10th of June, you fired that house, though you did give into the insurance company ’twas the 9th.” (Here again Slocum jumped, and his hands worked nervously.)

“The 10th was circus day, and most all the town had gone to Northboro. Likewise Lockwood’s field-hands went, and so there were no men folks working up beyond four corners; this gave you a clear coast.

“You started for the circus with Mis’is Slocum and ’Ram; you turned back, giving it out you’d got important business at the Mill Farm. But you didn’t go, and turned up before noon at the turnpike store, where you never trade. There you bought a new gallon can of kerosene, saying you was going up to the north lots to make a wash of it fer tent-worms in the apple trees. Now there ain’t even a wild crab tree in the north lots—only corn-fields.

“You went up that way all right, and a-spookin’ around the house. Everything was tight fast, and so the only place you could get in was by crawlin’ through the cellar winder, which you did, tearin’ a new pair o’ herrin’-bone pattern trousers so doin’.”

Again Slocum started, and his face wore a look of intense wonder mixed with fear.

“After you looked about for what you didn’t find,you spilled the kerosene about and set fire so’s nobody could get what maybe you’d overlooked.

“Then you scooted back in the corn lot and hid the can in the big blasted chestnut stump, and when a hue and cry was raised walked down as innercent as May, from hoein’ corn that wasn’t yet above ground!”

By this time Slocum had pulled himself together, and his defiance returned.

“Woman, you are crazy, and what you say is perfectully redeclous; I’ll have you behind asylum bars, if not in jail. Mere talk! You can’t prove a word you say, and what is this ’thing’ that I couldn’t find and wanted to burn? Just tell me that!”

“Prove? Oh, yes, I can; Lauretta Ann Lane is no random talker.

“Here’s the pants you wore, and that you sold the pedler the same afternoon—they smell yet o’ kerosene, and here’s the piece ye tore out on the winder-catch!” And Mrs. Lane whipped the telltale trousers out of her egg-basket.

“The kerosene can’s in the stump yet, but I’ve got it all straight; that poor Polack woman you turned out of house and home seen you hide it. Now what else was there?” And Mrs. Lane affected a lapse of memory.

“Oh, yes; you wanted to know what you was a-lookin’ for. Why, don’t you know? It was a big lawyer’s envelope marked ‘Papers concerning the Turner Mill Farm Property,—to be recorded.’”

Slocum breathed hard and grasped the table edge to steady himself.

“Jest why you wanted them papers I don’t know, but Lawyer Cole in Northboro, who’s got ’em, is goin’ to find out.”

“Lawyer Cole has them?” Slocum whispered hoarsely; “Lawyer Cole, did you say?”

“Yes, I did!” repeated Mrs. Lane; “and if you don’t think the testimony I’ve been givin’ you is true, and consider it a slander, I’ve got it writ out, and I’ll have him search that out too.”

“No, no,” said Slocum, speaking as if to himself. “How did you ever find—” and then he remembered and stopped. Mrs. Lane waited a few minutes, and then said:—

“It’s full noon now, and I must get home to dinner, so I’ll trouble you for that rent receipt. Thanks, and I’ll give you a word of advice in return. The Lord mostly finds out evil-doers, and not infrequent He trusts women to help Him, and I want you to consider that if I don’t give this matter a public airin’, it isn’t from either pity or fear of you, but because I don’twant the county to know that we harboured such a skunk among us so long; my last word being that you’d better get away from my neighbourhood before I change my mind!”

So it came about that before Christmas Abiram Slocum gave it out that his wife’s health was poor and he had been advised to go to California, where he intended to buy a vineyard, hinting at the same time that as he expected to sell a large tract of land to Mr. Clarke, he had no further interest in Laurelville; and though only four people knew the real reason, the whole village rejoiced without the slightest effort at concealment.

At the same time Joshua Lane found that his work as administrator of the O’More property had only begun instead of being closed.

Whathad Bird O’More been doing these many days? It did not need the skill of a magician to tell why even her notes to her Laurelville friends had been brief at best and then finally ceased. A single peep at her surroundings would have told the tale, and the more completely she became merged in them, the more hopeless she felt them to be.

Her weekly work in distributing the flowers was a bright spot indeed, as well as her visits to Tessie; but as she looked forward to the time when frost would kill the blossoms, the Flower Mission be closed, and the liberty of streets and parks cut off for confinement in the dark flat, her heart sank indeed.

All her hopes were centred about going to school, and the possibilities of meeting teachers who would understand her desire to learn, and help her with sympathy. Meanwhile, the city summer had told upon her country-bred body even more than on her sensitive temperament, and shegrew thinner every day, until finally her aunt was compelled to see it in spite of herself, and promised to take her down to Coney Island or Rockaway Beach “some day” when she was not busy, to freshen her up a bit; but that day never came, and as little Billy was constantly improving, her uncle had eyes only for him. In fact, the change in the little cripple was little short of marvellous. Of course his lameness remained, but his cheeks were round, his lips had lost their blue tint, and to hear him cry or complain was a rare sound indeed. That all this came of Bird’s devoted care her uncle was quite convinced; for it was she who gave Billy his morning bath, and managed,—no easy task,—that the battered tub should not again be used for a cupboard. It was Bird who took his food into the fire-escape bower, and coaxed and tempted him until he had eaten sufficient, and it was she who put him nightly into the little bed opposite her own and taught him to say, as a little prayer, the verse of the hymn her own mother had sung to her in the misty long ago:—

“Jesus, gentle Shepherd, hear me;Bless thy little lamb to-night:Through the darkness be thou near me;Keep me safe till morning light.”

But for Billy, Bird could not have endured through that dreadful summer. As it was, she often fingered her “keepsake,” still hanging about her neck, the thought comforting her that with the mysterious coin in it she could get back once more to the little village that seemed like heaven to her, no matter what happened after. Often, in fact, the only thing that kept her from running away was the belief that if her good friends could take her permanently, they would have sent for her, and pride, heroic pride, born of Old and New England, was still strong in Ladybird.

“She’ll perk up when school begins and she gets acquainted with girls her own age,” said O’More, cheerfully, as his attention was called to her pale cheeks by his wife. “I’m owin’ her good will for what she’s done for Billy, else I most wish I’d left her up there with those hayseeds that wanted her. Somehow she don’t fit in here, for all that she never complains. She’s different from us, and she makes me uncomfortable, lookin’ so solemn at me if I chance to take off my coat and collar of a night at supper to ease up a bit. Terence was different from us, too, and it’s bred in the bone.”

“Let well enough alone,” said Mrs. O’More, glad to have Billy so completely taken off herhands; “folks can’t afford to be different to their own, unless they’ve got the price. I’ve made her a good dress out of a remnant of bright plaid I bought, so next week she can shell off them shabby black duds that give me the shivers every time I see them. Maybe fixin’ up like other girls ’ll bring her to and liven her. She’s queer though, sure enough, don’t give no sass, and it ain’t natural; I never seen a girl her age before that didn’t talk back, and sometimes it riles me to see her keep so close shet when I up and let fly.”

In September school began, but this brought further disappointment, for Bird had hoped to find a friend at least in the teacher. She was, however, graded according to her size and age, not ability, as if she had been a wooden box, and found herself in an overcrowded room, a weak-eyed little Italian, with brass earrings, seated on one side of her, and the Polish sausage-seller’s daughter on the other, her dirty hands heavy with glass rings, which caused her to keep whispering behind Bird’s back as to her lack of jewellery and style; while at the first recess this little Slav told the astonished Bird, “If yer tink to get in vid us, you’ll got to pomp you ’air; dis crowt, we’s stylish barticular—ve iss.”

As to the teacher in trim shirt-waist, with prettyhands and hair, to whom the class recited in chorus, Bird longed to speak to her, to touch her, but she fled to a purer atmosphere as soon as school was out, and was remote as the stars.

As the weather grew cool, the fire-escape arbour was abandoned; they could spend less time out of doors, and Bird felt caged indeed. The engine-house now was the limit of their walks, for it grew dark very soon after school was out. Still they never tired of seeing the horses dash out, and Billy called Big Dave “my fireman,” and used to shout to him as he passed in the street. So the autumn passed.

******

It was a clear, cold afternoon a little before Christmas; the shops were gay with pretty things, and the streets with people. Billy was in a fever of excitement because his father, who had left home on a business trip a few days before, had promised him a Christmas tree, and Bird had gone out to buy the candles and some little toys to put on it, at a street stall. Billy, however, did not go, for he was not to see the toys until Christmas Eve.

Bird wandered across to Broadway at 23rd Street, and then followed the stream of shoppers southward. Was it only a year since last Christmas when shehad helped trim the tree at Sunday-school in Laurelville and had sung the treble-solo part in—

“Watchman! tell us of the night;What the signs of promise are.”

Would there ever again be any signs of promise for her? Somehow she had never before felt so lonely for her father as in that merry crowd. She wondered if he saw and was disappointed in her, and what Lammy was doing. Going up on the hill probably with the other village children to cut the Christmas tree and greens for church.

Not minding where she went, she followed the crowd on past and around Union Square and down town again. Then realizing that she was facing away from home and had not bought her candles, she looked up and saw on the opposite side of the street a beautiful gray stone church. At one side and joined to it was what looked like a house set well back from the street, from which it was separated by a wide garden. People were going in and out of the church by twos and threes.

A voice seemed to call Bird, and she too crossed Broadway and timidly pushed open the swinging door.

At first she could see nothing, as the only lights in the church were near the chancel. Then differentobjects began to outline themselves. There was no service going on, the people having come in merely for a few quiet moments.

Bird stood quite still in the little open space by a side door back of the pews; it was the first really peaceful time she had known since the day that she and Lammy carried the red peonies to the hillside graveyard, and as she thought of it, she seemed to smell the sweet spruce fragrance of those runaway Christmas trees that watched where her parents slept.

A flock of little choir boys trooped in from an opposite door for the final practice of their Christmas carols and grouped themselves in the stalls. Next a quiver of sound rushed through the church as the great organ drew its breath and swelled its lungs, as if humming the melody before breaking into voice. Then above its tones rang a clear boy-soprano.

“Watchman! tell us of the nightWhat the signs of promise are.”

and the chorus answered—

“Traveller! o’er yon mountain height,See that glory-beaming star.”

The answering echo quivered in Bird’s throat, suffocating her, and as, unable to stand, she knelttrembling upon the floor the odour of spruce again enveloped her, and groping, she found that she was really leaning against a pile of small trees that had been brought there to decorate the church for Christmas Eve, and as the door opened, men came in bringing more—dozens and dozens of them, it seemed.

Bird picked up a broken twig, and in spite of its sharpness pressed it against her face, kissing it passionately, never noticing that she was directly in the passage between the door and aisle, where presently a gentleman coming hurriedly in stumbled over her.

He was about to pass on with a curt apology, but glancing down, he saw that it was a little girl, and that though comfortably dressed and not actually poor, her face showed signs of distress and tears, so he stopped.

“What is it, my child?” he said. “Have you lost your way, or what? Come here and sit in this pew while you tell me about it. I’ve a daughter at home only a couple of years older than you, and she doesn’t like to have any one sad at Christmas time.”

It was months since any one had spoken to Bird in the gentle tongue that had been her father’s andwas her own, and though the tears started anew, she made haste to obey, lest he should suddenly disappear like all her pleasant dreams.

He was an alert, middle-aged man of affairs. He had a fine presence and keen eyes and, without making her feel that he was prying, succeeded in drawing out the bare facts of her story, nothing more, so that he had no idea that the trouble was more than a country-bred child’s homesickness at being shut up in the city, and having to go to school instead of reading all day long and trying to paint flowers.

“So you used to live in Laurelville?” he said; “why, I have a country place near there, not far from Northboro, my native town, where I built an Art School, and I have little city girls come to us there every summer for a playtime. If you will remember and write, or come to me when the next summer vacation begins, you shall be one of them. Meanwhile keep this, my address.” He handed her a card and passed on, for he was a good man and rich, with many people to make happy at Christmas time, and to be both rich and good in New York one must work very hard indeed.

Going out into the street again, Bird read the name on the card before slipping it into her pocket.Wonder of wonders! it was Clarke, the same as that of the wall-paper manufacturer whose manager had asked Terry to make designs for him. Of course he must be Marion Clarke’s father. The address was different from the one of the factory, but Bird knew enough of the city now to guess that this number on the card was of his house, and she now remembered that people had said that he conducted many various manufactories.

So he had built the School of Design at Northboro that she had dreamed about ever since she went there with her father to look at an exhibition of drawings! Could it be that this card was the Christmas sign of hope and promise to her? She almost flew homeward after buying the candles and little toys, and laughed and chatted so cheerfully with Billy when she gave him his supper, that her cousin Larry, who had always teased her for being set up, remarked to his mother, “Ladybird is coming down from her perch some; maybe she’ll get to be like us, after all.” But it was upward, not downward, that the brave, clipped wings were struggling.

******

Between Christmas and New Year there came a snow-storm, and then bitterly cold weather. In Laurelville snow meant sleighing, coasting, bracingair, and rosy cheeks; in East 24th Street it signified soaked skirts, sodden shoes, and sore throats, while for Billy it brought unhappy shut-in days, for his crutch slipped dangerously in icy weather.

One evening Mrs. O’More was called out to sit with a sick neighbour. She told Bird not to wait up as she might be late, and she would take the key with her, as the boys had keys of their own if they came in first.

Bird was used to thus staying shut into the flat alone, and so after she heard the key turn in the door of their narrow hallway, she amused herself for perhaps an hour by drawing, and then went to bed. She had been dragging Billy about on his sled up and down the street all the afternoon, so she soon fell into a heavy sleep.

It must have been a couple of hours after when she waked up suddenly and tried vainly to think where she was. The room felt hot and airless, and a strange smell of scorched leather filled the air. She managed to get on her feet, pulled on a few clothes, and tried to open a side window, but it stuck fast. Going to the front, she raised the sash, and as she did so, a cloud of smoke poured into the room, while the shouts and clashing of gongs in the street told what it was that had wakened her—the fire-engines! Thegreat sales stables with their tons of hay and straw were on fire, and the house also, while in the street all was in an uproar of frightened horses and men.

Rushing back to her room, she shook Billy awake and, wrapping a few clothes about him, dragged him toward the hall door. It was locked of course, as Mrs. O’More had taken the key. By this time the smoke and flames were pouring in the front windows. Ah, the fire-escape! Through the kitchen she struggled, and out on to the icy balcony, having the sense to close the window behind her.

The back yards were full of firemen, and excited people hung from the windows of opposite buildings. Bird tried to raise the trap in the floor door, but the boxes of frozen earth that had held the morning-glories bore it down, making it useless, and the one below was hopelessly heaped with litter.

Would nobody see her? Billy clung to her, sobbing pitifully, for he was lightly covered, and shivered with cold as well as fear. The window-frame inside was catching, and heat also came up from below. Was this the end? Must the wild bird die in her cage?

Suddenly a great shout arose in the rear; people had seen and were pointing them out. Up came the firemen, climbing, clinging, battering down the obstructionsbefore them. Ah, those wonderful firemen that keep our faith in old-time valour!

A moment more, and an axe struck open the prisoned trap-door, a head came through, and a voice cried, “Good God, it’s Bird and little Billy!”

“Dave, my fireman!” sobbed the boy, flinging himself into the strong arms. “Take him,” commanded Bird, as the man hesitated an instant; “I can follow.” Down the ladder they went step by step until the flames from the lower story crept through and stopped them again, and the slender fire ladder, held by strong arms, shot up to them, and Dave’s mate grasped Bird and carried her down to safety. Then the firemen cheered, and tears rolled down Big Dave’s cheeks unchecked.

Kind, if rough, people took them in and warmed and fed them, and more kind people guided Mrs. O’More to them when she rushed frantically home. But little Billy had suffered a nervous shock, and lay there moaning and seeming to think that the fire still pursued him.

“He will need great care and nursing to pull him through, for he is naturally delicate,” said the doctor the next day when they had moved into a couple of furnished rooms that were rented to Mrs. O’More by a friend in a near-by street until shecould pull herself together, as they had lost everything. “He must either go to a hospital or have a nurse,” continued the doctor, gravely. But Mrs. O’More could not be made to see it.

“His father’d never forgive me if I put him out o’ me hands,” she said; “he’ll pick up from the fright after a bit, and what with John away, and never saving a cent of cash no more than the boys, and the business all burned out along with us, I’ve not money in hand for the wasting on nurses.”

Bird knew better,—knew that Billy was very sick, and she could not let him die so. Ah! the keepsake, the precious coin! Now was the time to spend it, for there could be no greater necessity than this. What if it was not enough? Even if it was not much, it might do until her uncle got back, and then she knew Billy would have care if his father begged in the street for it.

Going away in a corner, she unfastened the silver chain and detached the little bag from it. With difficulty she ripped the thong stitches, but instead of a coin, out of many wrappings fell a slender band of gold set with one large diamond. As she turned the ring over in surprise, some letters within caught her eye—“Bertha Rawley, from her godfather, J. S.”

This was the name of Terence O’More’s mother, and the ring had been a wedding gift from her godfather, and the one valuable possession that she had clung to all her troubled life. But Bird knew nothing of this.

What could Bird do with it? She pondered—her city life had made her shrewd; she knew the miseries of the poor who went to the pawn shops, and guessed that any one in the neighbourhood might undervalue the ring, or likely enough say that she stole it.

Mr. Clarke—she would go to him! Now was the time! She borrowed a hat and wrap from the woman of whom the rooms were rented and stole out. In an hour she came back with a triumphant look upon her face, and laying a roll of bills before her aunt, said, “I’ve sold my keepsake; now we will have a nurse for Billy right away.”

After she understood about the money, and found that it was one hundred dollars, Mrs. O’More broke down and cried like a baby, telling Bird that she was a real lady and no mistake. And then adding, to Bird’s indignation, “I wonder did you get the value o’ the ring, or did he cheat you, the old skin!” But, nevertheless, the nurse came, and not an hour too soon.

Meanwhile a certain rich man sat at his library desk, holding a diamond ring in his hand, saying, half aloud: “I believe the girl’s story, though I suppose most people would say she stole the ring, or was given it by those who did. It is healthier to believe than to doubt. I shall investigate the matter to-morrow and keep the ring for the child. It is a fine stone worth four times the sum I gave her, but she would not take any more than the one hundred dollars, nor was it wise for me to press her. Ah! letters inside! Bertha Rawley! She said her grandmother was an Englishwoman. That new superintendent of the Northboro Art School is named Rawley. He studied at South Kensington. I wonder if they could be related. O’More. I think that name comes into that Mill Farm deed mix-up. I will write to Rawley at once and see what is known about the girl in Laurelville, for something tells me that child is ‘one of these little ones’ who should be helped.”

Januarywas half over before it was possible for the Lanes to take their long-promised trip to New York to look up Bird and bring her back, as her uncle had exacted, a legal sister to Lammy.

Moving from the small house into the large one, even though the necessary repairs were to be made by degrees, was more of an undertaking than Mrs. Lane had bargained for. Also it took Lammy a long time to get “the bones back in his legs,” though happiness and Dr. Jedd’s tonics worked wonders.

Dr. Jedd had suggested that a furnace required much less care than three or four stoves, and so one had been put in. Mrs. Jedd, who had very good taste, and a tactful way of expressing it that never gave offence, suggested to Mrs. Lane that, instead of covering the mahogany parlour set with red plush, the floor with a red-figured tapestry brussels, replacing the small window-panes with great sheets of glass, bricking up the wide fireplace,and then closing the whole room up except, as Joshua said, for funerals, it should be turned into a comfortable living-room.

This suited Joshua, the older boys, and Lammy exactly, and though Lauretta Ann demurred at first, saying, “It didn’t seem hardly respectable not to hev a best room,” she quickly yielded, and said that it “would be a real comfort to have a separate place to eat in when there was a lot of baking on hand and the kitchen all of a tousle, likewise to set in after meals.”

So the old furniture was recovered with a suitable dull green corduroy, and some comfortable Morris chairs added, “that pa and the boys wouldn’t be tempted to set back on the hind legs of the mahogany, which is brittle.” A deep red rug, that would not have to be untacked at housecleaning times, covered the centre of the floor, with Grandmother Lane’s long Thanksgiving dinner-table in the centre, and a smaller round one with folding leaves in the corner, for the entertaining of the friends who were constantly dropping in for a chat and a cup of tea and crullers or a cut of mince pie, for no one in the county had such a reputation for crullers and mince meat, combined with a lavish use of them, as Lauretta Ann Lane.

Next Mrs. Jedd ventured to suggest that the fireplace be left open and some of the big logs, with which Aunt Jimmy had always kept the woodshed filled, simply because her mother had done so before her, used for a nightly hearth fire.

Mrs. Lane said she hadn’t any andirons and the ashes would make dust, but Joshua was so pleased with the idea of returning to old ways that she yielded; and when, on the old fire-board being removed to clean the chimney of soot and swallows’ nests, a pair of tall andirons and a fender were found, the matter settled itself, and Mrs. Lane soon came to take pride in the cheerful blaze, while the best dishes, which were of really handsome blue and white India porcelain, were ranged in racks over the mantel-shelf.

Then there was a sunny southwest window, and Joshua fastened a long shelf in front of this for his wife’s geraniums, wax-plant, and wandering Jew that had shut out the light from the best window in the kitchen, and these brought in the welcome touch of greenery in spite of the particoloured crimped paper with which she insisted upon decorating the pots.

“How Bird will love this room!” Lammy said a dozen times a day, as he remembered how prettilyshe had arranged the scanty furnishings at the house above the crossroads, and disliked everything that savoured of show or cheap finery, and it seemed to him that Bird’s companionship was the only thing necessary to prove that heaven, instead of being a far-away region, at least had a branch at the fruit farm in Laurelville.

The doctor said that Lammy must not return to school until the midwinter term, and so he spent his time in the shop back of the barn, making many little knickknacks for the house, not a few of them being intended for Bird’s room, for which he also designed a low book-shelf that made a seat in the dormer window, and a table with a hinge that she could use when she wished to draw or paint, and then close against the wall.

This room was next to Mrs. Lane’s, and had two dormer windows and a deep press closet lighted by a high window, under which the washstand stood. It was furnished with a white enamelled bed and a plain white painted dresser, upon which, Lammy said, Bird could paint whatever flowers she chose. There were frilled curtains of striped dimity at the windows, and a quilt and bed valance of the same, for Mrs. Lane despised any ornamental fabric that would not wash and “bile.” The floorwas covered with matting, but three sheepskin rugs of home raising and dyed fox colour were placed, one at the side of the bed, one before the bureau, and one under the wall table, upon which Bird’s paint-box stood close to the leather-paper portfolio that Lammy had made to hold the precious sketches.

He had tried his best to find a wall paper with a red “piney” border, but they told him at the great paper warehouse at Northboro that they had never seen such a paper, so he took wild-rose sprays instead.

Lammy had also filled a small bark-covered box with Christmas ferns, ebony spleenwort, wintergreen, partridge-berries, and moss, for the window-ledge, while fresh festoons of ground-pine topped the windows even though Christmas was long past. In fact, Lammy could hardly keep away from the room, and often when he went in, he met his mother, for whom it had the same attraction, and then they would both laugh happily and, closing the door, come away hand in hand.

It never occurred to a single member of this simple, warm-hearted family, that there was any possibility of there being a slip between cup and lip, and in this faith they presently set out upontheir pilgrimage to New York, for which event Lammy wore a high collar and a new suit, his first to have long trousers.

The minister’s wife and Dinah Lucky took joint charge of the house while the Lanes were in New York, for they intended staying several days, perhaps a week, as Dr. Jedd said the change was exactly what they all needed after the doings and anxieties of the past eight months, and Mr. Cole, the lawyer from Northboro, gave them the card of a good hotel close to the Grand Central Station, where they would be well treated and neither snubbed nor overcharged. For he well knew that in a New York hotel, Laurelville’s Sunday-best clothes looked as strangely out of place as Dr. Jedd’s carryall would on Fifth Avenue.

During the past few weeks, Alfred Rawley, the new superintendent of the Northboro School of Industrial Art, had made several visits to the Lanes, at first upon business connected with Aunt Jimmy’s legacy, and then because he seemed to like to come. He was a fine-looking man of fifty, and not only a stranger in Northboro, but a bachelor without home ties. He seemed greatly interested in Bird, about whom Lammy talked so constantly that the visitor could not but hear of her, and asked to see the portfolioof drawings in which were some of hers, and he praised them very highly for their promise.

The Lanes arrived in New York just before dark of a Tuesday afternoon, and spent the rest of the evening in looking out of their windows at the remarkable and confused thoroughfare below them that was made still more of a spectacle by the glare of electric lights. Lammy wished to go and look for Bird at once, but his father wouldn’t hear of doing so until broad daylight, saying:—

“Sakes alive, it ain’t safe. I’ve been across Hill’s swamp without a lantern on a foggy night a-callin’ up lost sheep, but that down there with them queer kind o’ two-wheel carts that bob along in narrow places like teeter snipe crossin’ the mill-dam, I’ll not venture it, leastwise not with mother along.” So Lammy went to bed to kill time, but a little later curiosity got the better of Joshua, and he spent an hour in the lobby, where he learned, besides several other things, that the “teeter snipe” carts were called “hansome cabs.”

To the surprise of the early-rising country folk, it was eleven o’clock the next morning before they found themselves ready to take a south-bound Fourth Avenue car, for the visit to Bird, and Joshua told the conductor four times in ten blocks where they wishedto get off, and what they were going for, while Mrs. Lane sat still, smiling and quivering all over from the shiney tips of her first boots (other than Congress gaiters) to the jet fandango atop of a real Northboro store bonnet, and the smile was so infectious that it soon spread through the entire car.

When they got off at 24th Street and made the sidewalk in tremulous safety, they marched east in silence, counting the numbers as they went.

“’Tain’t much of a neighbourhood,” sniffed Mrs. Lane, wondering at the ash barrels and pails of swill that lined the way.

“Don’t jedge hasty, mother,” said Joshua; “we mustn’t be hard on city folks that ain’t got our advantages in the way o’ pigs to turn swill into meat, and bog-holes ter swaller ashes what don’t go to road-makin’.”

“We must be near there,” gasped Lauretta Ann, presently. She had been persuaded to have her new gown made a “stylish length” by Hope Snippin, the village dressmaker, in consequence of which she was grasping her skirts on both sides, floundering and plunging along very much like an old-style market schooner, with its sails fouled in the rigging.

“Oh, mother, look there!” said Lammy, with white, trembling lips. He had been running onahead and keeping track of the numbers, but he now stood still, pointing to a half block of burned and ruined buildings, walled in ice and draped with cruel icicles that seemed to pierce his very flesh as he gazed at them.

For a minute they were all fairly speechless and stood open-mouthed, then Joshua, recovering first, settled his teeth firmly back in place, and laughing feebly, said: “Been a fire, I reckon; thet’s nothing. I’ve heard somethin’ gets afire as often as every week in N’York. They must be somewhere, and we’ll jest calm down and ask the neighbours over the way—in course they’ll know.”

But to Joshua’s wonder they didn’t, at least not definitely, and all he could learn was that the O’Mores had moved somewhere a couple of blocks “over.”

“Gosh, but ain’t N’York a heathen town,” muttered Joshua; “jest think, folks burned out an’ their neighbours don’t take no trouble about ’em; we might even get knocked down, and I bet they wouldn’t be a bit surprised. I’d like to strike fer home.”

As they wandered helplessly along block after block, the crowd of workmen and children in the streets coming home to dinner told that it was noon.

There was no use in going they did not know where, and they had not met a single policeman whom they could question. As they stood upon a corner consulting as to what they had best do, a group of girls coming up and dividing passed on either side of them, one bold-looking chit in a red plush hat and soiled gown singing out something about “When Reuben comes to town,” and giving Lammy a push at the same time.

As he turned to avoid her, he heard his name called, and breaking from her mates, a slender little figure with big black eyes dropped her satchel and flung her arms around his neck, heedless of the merriment and jeers of her companions. Bird was found at last!

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