CHAPTER X.
ONE SUMMER'S AFTERNOON.
Huldah was home again, and Dick too, and more free and happy than they had ever been in their lives before, for, from Huldah, at any rate, there was lifted the great dread of being traced by her uncle and taken back, a dread which had in the old days lain always like a shadow on her life.

Now, the worst had happened, and was over, for the law had declared that neither Tom Smith nor Emma, his wife had the slightest claim to her, not being related at all.

Nor were they fit and proper persons to have the charge of any child.

And to her great delight she was handed over to the guardianship of the vicar and Miss Rose Carew, and to the care of Mrs.Perry, to be trained and brought up to be an honest, truthful, industrious woman.
Never to the end of her life would Huldah forget that home-coming, that drive back to Woodend Lane, or those days that followed.
"Was it really only yesterday that I was here, and Dick and I walked into Belmouth ?" she asked, incredulously, as she lay back in the carriage.

"It seems weeks and weeks ago! Oh, how lovely everything is! It seems as if I didn't notice it enough till now;" and she drew in long breaths of the fresh cold air, and the mingled scents of wet earth and pine trees.