im off
somewhere and puts a good new one in his place. Peek and see, Saint
Anne!"

"Peek yourself, Wesley. I'm--I'd rather have an angel than a
changeling. Anyhow, I'm going to sleep. God's here, taking care, so it
don't matter."

Happy in the faith that had been instilled into their minds from their
earliest consciousness the deserted ones fell fast asleep, though not
till Dorcas had slipped into Saint Augustine's place in the boys' bed
a little willow whistle Jim had made for her and which she had refused
to give her brother.

As for the angelic Gerald he was weakly trudging on his way toward the
cross-cut lane, which he had seen from the cabin window and had been
told led outward to the main road, running past Deer-Copse. How often
he had wished to be upon it, and now he wondered why he hadn't started
long before. Though it grew steadily dark, he kept as steadily on,
though his strength was sorely tried and he wished he dared stop and
rest. He was afraid to do this. He knew if he lay down on the ground,
that looked so tempting a bed, he wouldn't have the energy to go on
again. After a time his steps grew automatic. His feet lifted and fell
with no volition of his own, it seemed, and a curious drowsiness came
over him.

"I believe I'm going to sleep, walking!" he thought, and wearily
closed his eyes. But he opened them again with a start.

"What's that? What is it? Sounds like--I must be out of my head--I
don't know where I am. I can't see. Ah! the lane! I'm there at last.
Now I can lie right down and rest and somebody'll find me--sometime."

Yet once more into his drowsing ear fell a peculiar sound.

"Ah--umph! A-ah--oomph--ph--h----h!"

That prolonged bray so electrified him that he got up, to his knees,
then to his swaying feet, a ghostly figure in his white suit, and with
a last spurt of breath, cried:

"Billy! It's--_Billy_!"

Billy it was. Why then and there his mulish brain couldn't understand.
He had come a tiresome way, through woods and along country roads and
found it a painfully new experience. Of course, he had rested often
and long. He had been bidden, innumerable times: "Billy, lie down!"
and after an interval: "Billy, get up." Now, as he was wearily
trudging through the night came this apparition in white, right in his
path.

Billy had heard the stumbling of human feet long before his rider had,
and had announced the fact by mild remarks about it. But, sidewise
upon Billy's broad back--