Ho, ho! Well, he ain't laughin' now and neither are we--or we hadn't ought to be.

Neither is the child, I cal'late, poor thing.

I wonder what will become of her." And meanwhile the child herself was vaguely, and in childish fashion, wondering that very thing.

She was in the carriage room of the barn belonging to the Hall estate--if the few acres of land and the buildings owned by the late Marcellus may be called an estate--curled up on the back seat of the old surrey which had been used so little since the death of her mother, Augusta Hall, four years before.

The surrey was shrouded from top to floor with a dust cover of unbleached muslin through which the sunshine from the carriage room windows filtered in a mysterious, softened twilight.