d came the mournful hoot of an owl.

Judy slipped down to the softer grass, and resting her head on her arm
gazed up at the sky, and gradually her fear went from her in the
silence of the perfect night. A line marked in one of her father's
books came to her:

"God's in his heaven
All's right with the world."

Judy did not know that Browning had said that--she didn't care who had
said it, but it comforted her. If everything had seemed to go wrong in
her own little world, it was because she had made it wrong. Here under
the wonderful sky was peace, and if she was afraid and out of harmony
it was her own fault.

"If I hadn't gone where I ought not to have been, nothing would have
happened," was her rather mixed, if perfectly correct, summing up.

The little lambs bleated now and then:

"Maa-a-a, Maa-aa-a."

And the old ewes responded comfortingly,

"Baa-aa--" which Judy interpreted as meaning, "I am here, little one,
don't be afraid."

"I won't be afraid either, you dear old thing," said Judy to the
motherly creature near her, who had turned upon her now and then
inquiring gentle eyes. "I won't be afraid, and I am going to sleep."

She did go to sleep, and when she waked, the world was dark. The moon
had sailed away like a golden boat, and the stars seemed very far off.

Judy sat up and shivered. A cool wind had risen, but that was not what
had roused her.

She had heard something!

Something that just at the right of the flock of sheep moved silently,
something blacker than the darkness that enveloped it!

She thought of wild animals, of tramps, of everything natural that
might invade a pasture; then as a sepulchral cry broke once more upon
the air, she remembered all the tales she had ever heard of Things that
visited one in the night.

"Judy Jameson, you know you don't believe in ghosts," she tried to
reassure herself, "you know you don't, Judy Jameson," but all the same
her heart went "thumpety-thump."

She cowered back against the rock as a white figure appeared beside the
black one, and the two bore down upon her.

There was a sudden bewildering chorus:

"Caw--caw--caw--"

"Purr--rr--meow--"

And then Judy screamed, joyfully, "Oh, Belinda, Belinda, you precious
pussy cat," and in her relief she hugged the great white animal, as if
she were not the same girl who, not many days before, had said, "I hate
cats."

Becky walked around in a circle and inspected Judy.

"So it was you,