ety, and Dan was
ordered to follow her in, and deposit his packages on the table of the
apartment that was called the steward's room.

"One, two, three, four," counted Mademoiselle Benoite, with French
caution, lest he should have dropped any by the way. "You go outside
now, Dan, and I bring you something from my pocket for your trouble."

Dan returned outside accordingly, and stood gazing at the laundry
windows, which were lighted up. Mademoiselle dived in her pocket, took
something from thence, which she screwed carefully up in a bit of
newspaper, and handed it to Dan. Dan had watched the process in a glow
of satisfaction, believing it could be nothing less than a silver
sixpence. How much more it might prove, Dan's aspirations were afraid to
anticipate.

"There!" said Mademoiselle, when she put it into his hand. "Now you can
go back to your mother."

She shut the door in his face somewhat inhospitably, and Dan eagerly
opened his _cadeau_. It contained--two lumps of fine white sugar.

"Mean old cat!" burst forth Dan. "If it wasn't that mother 'ud baste me,
I'd never bring a parcel for her again, not if she bought up the shop.
Wouldn't I like to give all the French a licking?"

Munching his sugar wrathfully, he passed across the yard, and out at the
gate. There he hesitated which way home he should take, as he had
hesitated that far gone evening, when he had come up upon the errand to
poor Rachel Frost. More than four years had elapsed since then, and Dan
was now fourteen; but he was a young and childish boy of his age, which
might be owing to the fact of his being so kept under by his mother.

"I have a good mind to trick her!" soliloquised he; alluding, it must be
owned, to that revered mother. "She wouldn't let me go out to Bill
Hook's to-night; though I telled her as it wasn't for no nonsense I
wanted to see him, but about that there gray ferret. I will, too! I'll
go back the field way, and cut down there. She'll be none the wiser."

Now, this was really a brave resolve for Dan Duff. The proposed road
would take him past the Willow Pool; and he, in common with other
timorous spirits, had been given to eschew that place at night, since
the end of Rachel. It must be supposed that the business touching the
gray ferret was one of importance, for Dan to lose sight of his usual
fears, and turn towards that pool.

Not once, from that time to this, had Dan Duff taken this road alone at
night. From that cause prob