very,
very sick."

"God forbid!" cried Mrs. Marsden, "God forbid."

"If papa has come all the way down to Kentucky," continued Roberta, "I
don't believe he came down here just to fight us, I don't indeed. It looks
to me more like he is hunting for somebody. And who should that somebody
be but my own darling mamma?"

"It isn't probable he is hunting me, darling. It has been ten long years
since he went away. He knows where the old place is. He could have found
me easily enough."

"Well, but may be he wasn't exactly sure about you wanting him to come. He
might have wanted ever so bad to come himself, and yet been afraid _you_
didn't want him. I wouldn't go where I wasn't sure I was wanted,"
continued the child, a fine scorn curving her lips, "no, not for any
thing."

How much she looked like her father when she said that.

"May I go, Mamma?" she coaxed again. "Say yes, dear Mamma. You don't know
how I've longed to have a papa like other little girls."

Then the sorely tried heart gave a great leap and got way beyond self.

"Yes, you may go, darling," she cried; "and may the God of the pure in
heart watch over you and bring you back safely to your lonely mother."

The child coddled down again to her.

"What must I tell him for you, Mamma?" she asked.

Mrs. Marsden started. She had not expected that.

"Send him kind message, Mamma, just like your own sweet self. You are so
good to everybody, and he is your little daughter's papa, and you love him
dearly, don't you, dear Mamma?"

Then the woman-heart gave a great leap and reached out to that other heart
the child was pleading for, and it seemed as if they touched, although
miles separated them, and pride lay prostrate.

"I have erred," she reasoned dumbly, "erred in the sight of God and man. I
have been hard, hard. What right have I to hold him to so strict an
account? By my own contrition and unutterable yearning to behold his
face, will I judge him, and naught else, the husband of my youth, once
the delight of my eyes."

Then, having gone thus far, she could stop at nothing. Her eyes shone,
varying emotions chased over her beautiful face, her whole nature unbent,
tender, as when she stood in that room in the old days and heard the
benediction that pronounced them man and wife.

"O, you dear child!" she cried, "surely God has put in your little hands
the gift of healing. Tell him, tell him, your Father, that for ten long
years, the string has been on th