t Uncle Richard's about ten, just as they
were going to bed. When Uncle Richard heard what had happened, he
turned very pale, and murmured, "Thank God!" Aunt Kate got me out of
my wet clothes as quickly as possible, put me away to bed in hot
blankets and dosed me with ginger tea. I slept like a top and felt
none the worse for my experience the next morning.

At the breakfast table Uncle Richard scarcely spoke. But, just as we
finished, he said abruptly to Ernest, "I'm not going to sell Laddie.
You and the dog saved Ned's life between you, and no dog who helped do
that is ever going to be sold by me. Henceforth he belongs to you. I
give him to you for your very own."

"Oh, Mr. Lawson!" said Ernest, with shining eyes.

I never saw a boy look so happy. As for Laddie, who was sitting beside
him with his shaggy head on Ernest's knee, I really believe the dog
understood, too. The look in his eyes was almost human. Uncle Richard
leaned over and patted him.

"Good dog!" he said. "Good dog!"

At Five O'Clock in the Morning

Fate, in the guise of Mrs. Emory dropping a milk-can on the platform
under his open window, awakened Murray that morning. Had not Mrs.
Emory dropped that can, he would have slumbered peacefully until his
usual hour for rising--a late one, be it admitted, for of all the
boarders at Sweetbriar Cottage Murray was the most irregular in his
habits.

"When a young man," Mrs. Emory was wont to remark sagely and a trifle
severely, "prowls about that pond half of the night, a-chasing of
things what he calls 'moonlight effecks,' it ain't to be wondered at
that he's sleepy in the morning. And it ain't the convenientest thing,
nuther and noways, to keep the breakfast table set till the farm folks
are thinking of dinner. But them artist men are not like other people,
say what you will, and allowance has to be made for them. And I must
say that I likes him real well and approves of him every other way."

If Murray had slept late that morning--well, he shudders yet over that
"if." But aforesaid Fate saw to it that he woke when the hour of
destiny and the milk-can struck, and having awakened he found he could
not go to sleep again. It suddenly occurred to him that he had never
seen a sunrise on the pond. Doubtless it would be very lovely down
there in those dewy meadows at such a primitive hour; he decided to
get up and see what the world looked like in the young daylight.

He scowled at a letter lying on