kings yet, and not a mention of them foreigners as we're all dying
to hear of, and not a word of what victuals you ate, nor nothing. You're
a selfish girl, Maggie Ricketts, and that I will say, though I am your
mother."

"I'm sleepy," responded Maggie, who seemed by no means put out by this
tirade on the part of her mother. "I'll go up to bed if you don't mind,
mother. No, I said afore as I wasn't hungry."

She left the room, crept up the step-ladder to the loft, where the
family slept, and opening the tiny dormer window, put her elbows on the
sill and gazed out on the gathering gloom which was settling on the
moor.

The news of the calamity which had befallen Polly had reached Maggie's
ears. Maggie thought only of Polly in this trouble; it was Polly's baby
who was lost, it was Polly whose heart would be broken. She did not
consider the others in the matter. It was Polly, the Polly whom she so
devotedly loved, who filled her whole horizon. When the news was told
her she scarcely said a word; a heavy, "Eh!--you don't say!" dropped
from her lips. Even George, who was her informer, wondered if she had
really taken in the extent of the catastrophe; then she had turned on
her heel and walked down to her mother's cottage.

She was not all thoughtless and all indifferent, however. While she
looked so stoical and heavy she was patiently working out an idea, and
was nerving herself for an act of heroism.

Now as she leant her elbows on the sill by the open window, cold Fear
came and stood by her side. She was awfully frightened, but her resolve
did not falter. She meant to slip away in the dusk and walk across
Peg-Top Moor to the hermit's hut. An instinct, which she did not try
either to explain away or prove, led her to feel sure that she should
find Polly's baby in the hermit's hut. She would herself, unaided and
alone, bring little Pearl back to her sister.

It would have been quite possible for Maggie to have imparted her ideas
to George, to her mother, or to some of the neighbors. There was not a
person in the village who would not go to the rescue of the Doctor's
child. Maggie might have accompanied a multitude, had she so willed it,
to the hermit's hut. But then the honor and glory would not have been
hers; a little reflection of it might shine upon her, but she would not
bask, as she now hoped to do, in its full rays.

She determined to go across the lonely moor which she so dreaded alone,
for she alone must brin