t outside father's bed-room
door, and sometimes in the night he walks up and down the corridor, and
his tail goes flop up against the door. Once father thought it was
thieves."

"I suppose Hamlet's very strong?" said Mary earnestly.

"I should just rather think he was," said Jackie. "He wouldn't make
much of a robber. He'd just rear up on his hind-legs and take him by
the throat--so." He launched himself forward as he spoke, and seized
Patrick by the neck.

"And that would kill the robber?" asked Mary.

"Dead as a nail," replied Jackie with decision.

"Don't you wish robbers _would_ come some night," suggested Jennie.

"What would you do if they did?" said Agatha.

"I know what she'd do," put in Patrick quickly; "she'd hide her head
under the bed-clothes and keep on screaming for Rice."

"If I had a pistol I should shoot them," said Jackie, "only mine won't
go off."

"And perhaps," said Agatha, "_they'd_ have pistols that _would_ go off."

"Oh! I say," exclaimed Jackie suddenly, "if here isn't Mary actually
crying away like anything. What's the matter with her?"

It was quite true. Overwrought and frightened, these dreadful pictures
of robbers and pistols had a reality for her which was too much to bear.
Mary the courageous, the high-spirited, who scorned tears and laughed
at weakness, was now crying and sobbing helplessly, like the greatest
coward of them all.

Fraulein put her arm round her compassionately. "She is quaite too
tired," she said; "it is an attack of nerfs. Nefer mind, dear shild.
When you will sleep to-night you shall feel quaite better to-morrow."

She drew her closely to her side; and Mary, who generally despised
Fraulein and laughed at her broken English, was thankful now to feel the
comfort of her kind protecting arm.

STORY ONE, CHAPTER 4.

A GYPSY CHILD?

The sun was streaming through Mary's small window when she woke up
somewhat later than usual the next morning. For a minute she lay with
half-closed eyes, feeling very snug and comfortable, quietly gazing at
all the well-known objects in the room--at the picture of the little
girl reading, which hung opposite her bed, at the book-shelf with all
the brightly-covered books she was so fond of, at her canary hopping
restlessly in his cage, at the cuckoo clock, and finally at the little
clog in the middle of the mantel-piece. But when she came to this her
eyes opened wide, she sat up, rubbed them, and looked at it aga