ther?"

"Maybe our mother'll make Floyd well," cried Fledra. "Oh, she couldn't
help but love him, could she, Sister Ann?"

"And it will be impossible for her not to love you, Deary," exclaimed
Ann, wiping her eyes. "But now you must dress. Have you still the
clothes you wore away from home?"

"Yes, I have them; but they're all mussed. I fell in the lake, and got
them all wet, and they're wrinkled now. They're up in the loft.
Wait--I'll get them." She was scrambling up the ladder as she spoke, and
her last words were uttered in the darkness of the loft.

Ann could hear the girl moving about overhead, and heard the dragging of
a box across the floor. Then another sound broke upon her ears, and
before she could move toward the door it opened, and a shabby, one-armed
man shuffled in, followed by Everett Brimbecomb.

* * * * *

After Everett had disappeared across the little bridge, Scraggy closed
the rickety door of her hut and went fidgeting about in the littered
room. Long she brooded, sniveling in her bewilderment. Something hazy,
something out of the past, knocked incessantly upon her demented brain.
This something touched her heart; for she whimpered as does a hurt child
when the hurt is deep and the child's mother is not near. She still
missed Black Pussy, and when she thought of the loss of her only friend
wilder paroxysms of frenzied grief filled the shanty.

After one of her raving fits of crying more vehement than those
preceding, Black Pussy again came to her mind, and suddenly she was
taken back to the wintry night she had lost him. Feebly she put the
events of that evening together, one by one, until like a burst of light
the memory of her boy came to her. Not once hitherto had she remembered
him since his blow had sent her into unconsciousness. Now she recalled
how roughly her son had handled her, and she did not forget his threat
to kill her if she ever mentioned to anyone that she was his mother. She
recognized, too, the identity of the stranger who had asked her the way
to the scow but a little while before.

A sane expression came into her eyes, and she settled herself back to
think. With her pondering came a clear thought--her boy was seeking his
father! Still somewhat dazed, she tottered to one corner of the hut and
fumbled for her shawl.

"He axed for Lon!" she whispered. "Nope, he axed for Lem, his own daddy.
Now, Lemmy'll take me with 'em--oh, how I love 'em bo