tidings came of the missing boy.

Down the quiet shadowy drive from the Owl's Nest went the two little
girls and their attendant. Inna little knew to what she was going,
tripping along and talking to Jenny. Clear of the drive, their path home
lay in the moonlight, and not far had they gone when a little wailing
mew came to them from behind a hedge, and then a small white and black
kitten emerged therefrom, and came and rubbed herself round Inna's feet.
She caught it up and fondled it, the knowing little pleader mewing such
a pleased mew then, that you may be sure it went straight to the little
girl's heart.

"Oh, if I might keep it as my very own!" she cried; "but I'm afraid that
Smut wouldn't like it."

"I'm afraid Mrs. Grant wouldn't like it," said Mary, as a stronger
objection.

"Take the kitten home and ask her," advised Jenny; "and if she says
'No,' you could but ask your uncle, and if he says 'Yes,' she wouldn't
dare to say 'No.'"

"I don't think she would wish to say 'No' to anything that she thought
would make uncle or me happy," mused Inna aloud, and in this happy
confidence she hugged the foundling to her, and went on her way through
the moonlight, just as if she was not going home to the unlooked-for,
that which would stir her poor little heart to its centre.

How would she bear it?

CHAPTER IX.

OSCAR'S RETURN--THE MYSTERY CLEARED--ON THE TOR AGAIN.

How did Inna bear it?

As she bounded into the fire-lit kitchen, to prefer her request to Mrs.
Grant about her kitten, there sat Oscar by the fire, in his own especial
chair, just as if he had sat there nightly for the last six weeks: save
for this, that he had an ugly scar on his forehead scarcely healed, that
his face was thin and wan, and that he wore somebody's clothes, not his
own--those in which he had vanished.

"Oscar!" she cried, and sat down and wept over her joy as if it were a
sorrow, like a very excited little maiden--that is how she bore her
surprise. Mary knew nothing of his arrival; he had come after she had
left to bring the little girls home. The poor kitten went flying
somewhere, anywhere to be out of the way of such sobs and tears.

"Master--Dr. Willett," called the housekeeper from out of the open
kitchen door, wondering what effect the sight of Oscar would have upon
the two doctors, who had to bear the sight of so much.

"Yes--what is it?" came wandering back up the passage. The speaker
followed close behind, Mr. B