Double Barrel Cannula

funeral for to-morrow, and I will run over to it; and then we can arrange any further matters of business."

CHAPTER XXI.

"I feel sure he loved you," said Sidney, "though he would not show it."

"I am glad you say that," she answered in a trembling voice.

They sat in silence for a few minutes; the pleasant country sounds only falling peacefully on their ears. Then the girl spoke again in slow and measured tones.

"I do so wish you would take me away with you," she said. "I would do everything you like, and work at any kind of work; and I should want nothing but food and clothes. My clothes do not cost much," she added, looking down on the coarse merino dress she was wearing. "Betsy buys my frocks for me, and she says they cost less than her own. If you could afford to let me live with you I would try not to be an expense to you."

"Then you would like to live with me?" asked Sidney with a smile.

"You are more like a father to me than he was," she replied wistfully. "Oh, yes! I should love to live with you. I love you."

"That is well," he said, "because your father has left you to my care—you and your money."

"Have I any money?" she inquired.

"A great deal," he replied; "you will be very rich."

"Oh!" she cried with a sigh, "I always thought we were poor. And Jesus Christ says, 'How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God.'"

The tone, and the look, and the words were so like Margaret's that they startled him. This young girl might have been Margaret's daughter.

"But, perhaps, you want money," she went on, after a pause; "perhaps you can use it. I only want a little; and I could not use much. Take it; I do not care for it. It shall all be yours. It is not impossible to enter the kingdom of God, even if you are rich."

"I trust not," he answered gravely, "for I, too, am a rich man, and my wife is a rich woman, yet she is truly in the kingdom of heaven already. My wife will teach you how to use your riches well."

"I thought we were very poor," pursued Dorothy. "My father gave me a shilling once, the day he let Betsy take me to York with her, to see the Minster. If I am to be a rich woman, I ought to have learned how to spend money. Will it take me long to learn it?"

"Very likely not," he replied, smiling at her anxious glance; "it is easy enough to spend money."

"If you leave me here," she went on, "I should like to keep the dogs with me, for his sake, you know. They would miss me so, and I should miss them; and this place is too lonely to live in without plenty of fierce dogs. John and Betsy want to get rid of them," she said, cautiously lowering her voice; "but please let me keep them if I stay here."

"But you cannot stay here," he answered. "The day after to-morrow I must take you away, and you will live in my house, under my wife's care, until you are of age. You have a great deal to learn, my child."

"I do not know anything!" she cried clasping her hands. "Do you think she will like me? I never spoke to a lady in my life; and I am so ignorant. I can only read, and write, and sew. Only I can work in a garden and make flowers grow, and take care of dogs, and walk miles and miles on the moors. I know all the birds, and all the wild creatures that live there, and they will come to me when I am all alone and I stand quite still and call to them. After the funeral to-morrow I must go and bid them good-by. Because, if I ever come back here, I shall be different. Oh! how different I shall be; and perhaps they will not know me again."

She turned her head away, looking out pensively across the moors, where the sun was setting behind the low curves of the horizon. There was a quaint grace about this girlish outpouring of her full heart which touched Sidney deeply, accustomed as he was to nothing less conventional than Phyllis, with her pretty manners and highly cultivated accomplishments. He felt sure the girl had never spoken so freely to anyone before. What would Margaret think of her? But he smiled as he thought how warmly Margaret would welcome this desolate young girl who had so quickly won her way to his heart. She was in no degree imbecile, he told himself as he looked at the low, broad forehead and the thoughtful eyes, and the firm yet sweet mouth of the girl who sat so motionless at his side watching the western sky. This was a fresh, simple, unfettered nature which had grown up alone, with its own thoughts and feelings, and Margaret was the very person to mold it into true womanly strength and sweetness.

They went into the house as soon as the sun was set and the chill air of the moors swept across the neglected garden. A supper of oatcakes, brown bread and cheese, with a large jug of buttermilk, had been laid on a bare table in the large hall; and Dorothy invited him hospitably to partake of it. It was the meal of a workingman. A fire of peat and wood was smoldering on the hearth, which, when she stirred it, gave a fitful blaze, and this, with one candle, was all the light they had during the evening. But Dorothy made no comment on the frugal meal or the dim light; it was evidently all she was used to, and she did not think her guest would find it strange.

The next morning Sidney and the lawyer alone followed the dead man to the grave. Dorothy said nothing about going, and Sidney thought it best that she should be spared the excitement. As they drove somewhat slowly among the lanes, followed by John and the four mastiffs, the solicitor gave to Sidney all the necessary information concerning the property of the deceased, and took his instructions as to the management of Dorothy's inheritance. He did not return to the Manor after the funeral, bidding Sidney good-by at the churchyard gate. So, with no mourners, they laid Dorothy's father in the grave.

Sidney took care to dine at the village inn, where the fare was better than at the Manor, and it was late in the afternoon before he returned. Dorothy had gone out on the moors, and the dogs were yelping and baying in the stable-yard, making their cries resound far and near, as if they resented being left behind. John pointed out the path Dorothy had taken, and he followed it till it became a scarcely perceptible track among the heather. It was an intense enjoyment to him to be up here in the bracing air, with miles upon miles of uplands stretching on every hand as far as he could see, with

little lonely tarns lying in the hollows, and gray rocks, half covered with moss, scattered among the purple heather. He regretted that he had ever let Brackenburn Manor, and had not kept it as a summer resort for Margaret and the boys. How they would have enjoyed its wildness and solitude! but now their boyhood was over. Still he would bring Margaret here next summer, and they would have long rambles together, such as they had never had before.

He caught sight of Dorothy at last, her slight girlish figure standing out clearly against the sky, as she stood on a ridge of rising ground. As his footsteps drew nearer to her, the dried heather crackling under his tread, there was a flutter of birds all around her, flying away hither and thither, and he fancied he heard the scuttering of little wild creatures through the ling and brushwood. He saw her face was bathed in tears as he came up to her.

"I have bid them all good-by," she said, "and I think they understand. And I'm saying good-by to the moors all the time in my heart. It can never be the same again; for they die soon—the poor little birds and the wild things—and their young ones will not know me if I go away; and they'll be afraid of me and fancy I mean to hurt them or catch them. I'm very glad to go and live with you anywhere, but I love the moors and the sky, and the living creatures; and I cannot go away from them without crying."

"But we shall come again," he said; "the Manor is mine; and we are coming next winter to fix on a site for building a new house for my son Philip. You shall help to choose it, Dorothy. Who could choose it better?"

As he spoke the thought flashed across his brain, why should not Philip marry this charming girl with her large fortune? After three years' companionship with Margaret she would be all he could wish in his future daughter-in-law. She had won his heart already, and she would make his and Margaret's old age as happy as their middle life had been. Nothing could be better than that Dorothy should marry Philip and live here, in the birthplace she loved so much, for the best part of every year.

"Who is Philip!" asked Dorothy.

"One of my boys," he answered. "I have two of them, Philip and Hugh."

"I never spoke to any boys," she said in a troubled tone.

"It is time you did," he replied, laughing heartily. "What sort of a world have you lived in? Philip is heir to this estate and will live for a time in the Manor. Here are my boys' photographs for you to see, and my wife's, too."

He put into her hands a morocco case containing the three portraits, and Dorothy scrutinized them with intent eagerness. But she had never seen photographs, and their want of color disappointed her.

She gave them back to Sidney with a faint smile.

"I shall not like any of them as much as you," she said.

CHAPTER XXII.