him, mamma?"

"I think so. I saw a poor boy, who seemed to me to have had a
stroke of some sort when he was an infant."

"But, madam, that would not make him so spiteful and malicious!"

"If every one is against him and treats him as a wicked mischievous
elf, it is only too likely to make him bitter and spiteful. Nay,
Anne, if you come back stuffed with old wives' tales, I shall not
allow you to go home with Lucy Archfield."

The threat silenced Anne, who was a grave and rather silent little
person, and when she mentioned it to her friend, the answer was,
"Did you tell your mother? If I had told mine, I should have been
whipped for repeating lying tales."

"Oh then you don't believe it!"

"It must be true, for Madge knew it. But that's the way always if
one lets out that one knows more than they think."

"It is not the way with my mother," stoutly said Anne, drawing up
her dignified little head. And she kept her resolution, for though
a little excited by her first taste of lively youthful
companionship, she was naturally a thoughtful reticent child, with a
character advanced by companionship with her mother as an only
child, through a great sorrow. Thus she was in every respect more
developed than her contemporary Lucy, who regarded her with wonder
as well as affection, and she was the object of the boyish devotion
of Charley, who often defended her from his cousin Sedley's
endeavours to put down what he considered upstart airs in a little
nobody from London. Sedley teased and baited every weak thing in
his way, and Lucy had been his chief butt till Anne Woodford's
unconscious dignity and more cultivated manners excited his utmost
spleen.

Lucy might be incredulous, but she was eager to tell that when her
cousin Sedley Archfield was going back to 'chambers,' down from the
Close gate came the imp on his shoulders in the twilight and twisted
both legs round his neck, holding tight on in spite of plunges,
pinches, and endeavours to scrape him off against the wall, which
were frustrated or retaliated by hair pulling, choking, till just
ere entering the college gateway, where Sedley looked to get his
revenge among his fellows, he found his shoulders free, and heard
"Ho! ho! ho!" from the top of a wall close at hand. All the more
was the young people's faith in the changeling story confirmed, and
child-world was in those days even more impenetrable to their elders
than at present.

Changeling or no, it wa