re, it's as likely as not to be wasted on her
good-for-nothing husband."

Absorbed in the higher and dearer interests that filled my mind, I had
thus far forgotten the very existence of Mr. Van Brandt.

"Where is he?" I asked.

"Where he ought to be," was the answer. "In prison for debt."

In those days a man imprisoned for debt was not infrequently a man
imprisoned for life. There was little fear of my visit being shortened
by the appearance on the scene of Mr. Van Brandt.

Ascending the stairs, I found the child waiting for me on the upper
landing, with a ragged doll in her arms. I had bought a cake for her on
my way to the house. She forthwith turned over the doll to my care, and,
trotting before me into the room with her cake in her arms, announced my
arrival in these words:

"Mamma, I like this papa better than the other. You like him better,
too."

The mother's wasted face reddened for a moment, then turned pale again,
as she held out her hand to me. I looked at her anxiously, and discerned
the welcome signs of recovery, clearly revealed. Her grand gray eyes
rested on me again with a glimmer of their old light. The hand that had
lain so cold in mine on the past night had life and warmth in it now.

"Should I have died before the morning if you had not come here?" she
asked, softly. "Have you saved my life for the second time? I can well
believe it."

Before I was aware of her, she bent her head over my hand, and
touched it tenderly with her lips. "I am not an ungrateful woman," she
murmured--"and yet I don't know how to thank you."

The child looked up quickly from her cake. "Why don't you kiss him?" the
quaint little creature asked, with a broad stare of astonishment.

Her head sunk on her breast. She sighed bitterly.

"No more of Me!" she said, suddenly recovering her composure, and
suddenly forcing herself to look at me again. "Tell me what happy chance
brought you here last night?"

"The same chance," I answered, "which took me to Saint Anthony's Well."

She raised herself eagerly in the chair.

"You have seen me again--as you saw me in the summer-house by the
waterfall!" she exclaimed. "Was it in Scotland once more?"

"No. Further away than Scotland--as far away as Shetland."

"Tell me about it! Pray, pray tell me about it!"

I related what had happened as exactly as I could, consistently with
maintaining the strictest reserve on one point. Concealing from her the
very existence of Miss