ll promise me that
you will never tell any one?"

"You may be sure I shall keep your queer secret. But have you not told
it to any one but me?"

"Yes," said Annie, "but I have only told it to one other, Mr Croft. But
please don't speak of it to him."

"Mr Croft!" exclaimed Roberta. "How in the world did you come to tell
him? Do you know him so well as that?"

"Well," said Annie, "it does seem out of the way, I admit, that I should
tell him, but I can't give you the whole story of how I came to do it.
It wouldn't interest you--at least, it would, but I oughtn't to tell it.
It is a twisty sort of thing."

"Twisty?" said Roberta, drawing herself up, and a little away from her
companion.

Annie looked up, and caught the glance by which this word was
accompanied, and the tone in which it was spoken went straight to her
soul. "Now," said she, "if you are going to look at me, and speak in
that way, I'll tell you every bit of it." And she did tell the whole
story, from her first meeting with Mr Croft in the Information Shop,
down to the present moment.

"What is your name, anyway?" said Roberta, when the story had been told.

"My name," said the other, "is Annie Peyton."

"And now, do you know, Annie Peyton," said Roberta, passing her fingers
gently among the short, light-brown curls on her companion's forehead,
"that I think you must have a very, very kindly recollection of the boy
who used to come down to the lowest branches of the tree to drop apples
into your apron."

CHAPTER XVI.

Shortly after Peggy arrived with her mistress at the Keswick
residence, her mind began to be a good deal disturbed. She had been
surprised, when the carriage drew up to the door, that "Mahs' Junius"
had not rushed down to meet his intended bride, and when she found he
was not in the house, and had, indeed, gone away from home, she did not
at all know what to make of it. If Miss Rob took the trouble to travel
all the way to the home of the man that the Midbranch people had decided
she should marry, it was a very wonderful thing, indeed, that he should
not be there to meet her. And while these thoughts were turning
themselves over in the mind of this meditative girl of color, and the
outgoing look in her eyes was extending itself farther and farther, as
if in search of some solution of the mystery, up rode Mr Croft.

"Dar _he!_" exclaimed Peggy, as she stood at the corner of the house
where she had been pursuing her meditati