ng to think she had in
her "certain inalienable rights," chief of which was the right of
discovery. Molly never thought of disputing those rights. She looked
up to pretty, wayward, impulsive Bessie Raeburn as to a superior
being,--an angelic deliverer. In her half-adoring gratitude and love,
she could have "kissed the hem of her garment," or the lower flounce of
her pretty organdie dress. She would often say, "O, where would I have
been now, if it had not been for _you_, dear Bessie? In a pauper's
grave,--or worse, in prison,--or worse still, on the streets, a wicked,
lost girl, loving nobody, and only knowing of God and Jesus by hearing
their names in dreadful oaths."

"But, Molly dear," replied Bessie,--"I _must_ always call you Molly,--I
have done so little, after all. In thanking me, don't forget papa and
your father Morton."

"I don't forget them, nor my Father in heaven either; but you, Bessie,
were the first to pity me and try to help me, though I had done you
wrong."

"Well, as for that, Molly," said Bessie, seriously, "perhaps God had
more to do with that wild Christmas expedition of mine than anybody
thought at the time. It seemed so rash and foolish. I have always
thought that good policeman an angel, an Irish angel, in the rough,
though he did not know it. I don't believe that angels and saints ever
have a very high opinion of themselves, do you?"

This was the happiest summer of Molly's life,--it was also to prove the
most memorable.

One afternoon, as she was returning from the village, down a quiet,
shady lane, which led through her father's farm, she was suddenly
confronted by the tyrant of her unhappy childhood, Patrick Magee. He
was even a more wretched looking creature than of old,--shabbier,
dirtier, with every mark of the most degrading vice. As he stepped
from behind a hazel-bush, where he had been skulking, into her path,
Molly gave an involuntary shriek, and shrank back from him in fear and
aversion.

"Whist, darling!" he exclaimed in a wheedling tone. "Be aisy, just;
it's not meself that will harm a hair of yer head. And sure this is
not the way you should meet yer poor ould unfortunate father. Is this
the kind of filial piety you 've larned from your grand friends?"

"I do not believe you _are_ my father," replied Molly, looking directly
into his bleared eyes, that quailed under her gaze.

"Now, now, whoever heard the likes o' that?" began Patrick, with a
shocked expres