thought it wisest to accept it as if it were all true.

"This is very touching, Roland," I said.

"Oh, if you had just heard it, father! I said to myself, if father heard
it he would do something; but mamma, you know, she's given over to
Simson, and that fellow's a doctor, and never thinks of anything but
clapping you into bed."

"We must not blame Simson for being a doctor, Roland."

"No, no," said my boy, with delightful toleration and indulgence; "oh,
no; that's the good of him; that's what he's for; I know that. But
you--you are different; you are just father; and you'll do
something--directly, papa, directly; this very night."

"Surely," I said. "No doubt it is some little lost child."

He gave me a sudden, swift look, investigating my face as though to see
whether, after all, this was everything my eminence as "father" came
to,--no more than that. Then he got hold of my shoulder, clutching it
with his thin hand. "Look here," he said, with a quiver in his voice;
"suppose it wasn't--living at all!"

"My dear boy, how then could you have heard it?" I said.

He turned away from me with a pettish exclamation,--"As if you didn't
know better than that!"

"Do you want to tell me it is a ghost?" I said.

Roland withdrew his hand; his countenance assumed an aspect of great
dignity and gravity; a slight quiver remained about his lips. "Whatever
it was--you always said we were not to call names. It was something--in
trouble. Oh, father, in terrible trouble!"

"But, my boy," I said (I was at my wits' end), "if it was a child
that was lost, or any poor human creature--but, Roland, what do you
want me to do?"

"I should know if I was you," said the child eagerly. "That is what I
always said to myself,--Father will know. Oh, papa, papa, to have to
face it night after night, in such terrible, terrible trouble, and never
to be able to do it any good! I don't want to cry; it's like a baby, I
know; but what can I do else? Out there all by itself in the ruin, and
nobody to help it! I can't bear it! I can't bear it!" cried my generous
boy. And in his weakness he burst out, after many attempts to restrain
it, into a great childish fit of sobbing and tears.

I do not know that I ever was in a greater perplexity, in my life; and
afterwards, when I thought of it, there was something comic in it too. It
is bad enough to find your child's mind possessed with the conviction
that he has seen, or heard, a ghost; but that he shou