hy he wished to find Ellen Lee; and asked if
the girl had said anything to her of the wreck, or of two babies.

"Not a word, sir, not a word; though I tried to draw her into talkin'.
It's very little she said, at best; she was a-grumpy-like."

"What about that rag-bag?" asked Donald, returning to his former train
of thought. "Have you the same one yet?"

"That I have," she answered, laughing; "and likely to have it for many a
year to come. My good mother made it for me when I was married, and so
I've kept it and patched it till it's like Joseph's coat; and useful
enough it's been, too--holding many a bit that's done service to me and
my little romps. 'Keep a thing seven year,' my mother used to say, 'keep
it seven year an' turn it, an' seven year again, an' it'll come into
play at last.'"

"Why may you not have saved that tatter of the old gown twice seven
years, then?" persisted Donald.

"Why, bless you, young sir, there's no knowin' as to that. But you
couldn't find it, if I had. For why? the black pieces, good, bad, and
indifferent, are all in one roll together, and you nor I couldn't tell
which it was."

"Likely enough," said Donald, in a disappointed tone; "and yet, could
you--that is--really, if you wouldn't mind, I'd thank you very much if
we could look through that rag-bag together."

"Mercy on us!" exclaimed the woman, seized with a sudden dread that her
young visitor might not be in his right senses.

"If I could find those pieces of black stuff," he urged, significantly,
"it would be worth a golden guinea to me."

Sure, now, that he was a downright lunatic, she moved back from him with
a frightened gesture; but glancing again at his bright, manly face, she
said in a different tone:

"And it would be worth a golden guinea to _me_, young master, just to
have the joy of finding them for you. Step right into this room, sir,
and you, Nancy and Tom" (to a shy little pair who had been sitting,
unobserved, on the lowest step of the clean, bare stairway), "you run up
and drag the old piece-bag down to Mother. You shall have your way,
young gentleman--though it's the oddest thing that ever happened to me."

The huge bag soon came tumbling down the stairs, with soft thuds; but
the little forms that, for the time, had given it life and motion, did
not appear. Donald gladly drew it into the little room, where his
hostess soon extracted from its depths a portly black roll.

Alas! To the boyish mind a bundle m