an trust in her. He nestled close in his rugs
and reached out an arm.

It rubbed across the weals on Ruth's back, and was torture.
She clenched her teeth, while tears--tears of physical anguish,
irrepressible--over-brimmed her lashes and fell uncounted in the
darkness.

"You are crying. Why? I like you." The child's voice trailed off into
dream.

"Closer!" whispered Ruth, and would have forced the embrace upon her
pain; but it relaxed. Dicky's head fell sideways, and rested, angled
between the cushions and her shoulder.

She sat wide-eyed, staring into folds of darkness, while the coach
rolled forward smoothly towards the dawn.

BOOK II.

PROBATION.

Chapter I.

AFTER TWO YEARS.

"Come down and play!"

Ruth, looking down from the open lattice, smiled and shook her head.
"I must not; I'm doing my lessons."

"Must not!" mimicked Master Dick. "You're getting stupider and
stupider, living up here. If you don't look out, one of these days
you'll turn into an old maid--just like Miss Quiney."

"Hs-s-sh! She's downstairs somewhere."

"I don't care if she hears." Dicky ran his eyes defiantly along the line
of ground-floor windows under the verandah, then upturned his face
again. "After coming all this way on purpose to play with you," he
protested.

"You have made yourself dreadfully hot."

"I _am_ hot," the boy confessed. "I gave Piggy the slip at the foot of
the hill, and I've run every step of the way."

"Is _he_ here?" Ruth glanced nervously toward a clump of elms around
which the path from the entrance-gate curved into view. "But you
oughtn't to call Mr. Silk 'Piggy,' you know. It--it's ungentlemanly."

"Why, I took the name from you! You said yourself, one day, that he was
a pig; and so he is. He has piggy eyes, and he eats too much, and
there's something about the back of his neck you must have noticed."

"It's cruel of you, Dicky, to remember and cast up what I said when I
knew no better. You know how hard I am learning: in the beginning you
helped me to learn."

"Did I?" mused Dicky. "Then I wish I hadn't, if you're going to grow up
and treat me like this. Oh, very well," he added stoutly after a pause,
"then I'm learning too, learning to be a sailor; and it'll be first-rate
practice to climb aloft to you, over the verandah. You don't mind my
spitting on my hands? It's a way they have in the Navy."

"Dicky, don't be foolish! Think of Miss Quiney's ro