with me?" groaned Patience.

"One little gal is enough," spoke up Susan Elder. "He won't like it if
two goes."

That settled it. Poor little Patience Mather crept meekly out of
the house and down the hill to Squire Bean's, without even Martha's
foreboding sympathy for consolation.

She looked ahead wistfully all the way. If she could only see her
mother coming--but she did not, and there was Squire Bean's house,
square and white and massive, with great sprawling clumps of white
peonies in the front yard.

She went around to the back door, and raised a feeble clatter with the
knocker. Mrs. Squire Bean, who was tall and thin and mild-looking,
answered her knock. "The--Squire--sent--for--me"--choked Patience.

"Oh!" said the old lady, "you air the little Mather-gal, I guess."

Patience shook so she could hardly reply.

"You'd better go right into his room," said Mrs. Squire Bean, and
Patience followed her. She gave her a little pat when she opened a
door on the right. "Don't you be afeard," said she; "he won't say
nothin' to you. I'll give you a piece of sweet-cake when you come
out."

Thus admonished, Patience entered. "Here's the little Mather-gal,"
Mrs. Bean remarked; then the door closed again on her mild old face.

[Illustration: LITTLE PATIENCE OBEYS THE SQUIRE'S SUMMONS.]

When Patience first looked at that room, she had a wild impulse to
turn and run. A conviction flashed through her mind that she could
outrun Squire Bean and his wife easily. In fact, the queer aspect
of the room was not calculated to dispel her nervous terror. Squire
Bean's peculiarities showed forth in the arrangement of his room, as
well as in other ways. His floor was painted drab, and in the center
were the sun and solar system depicted in yellow. But that six-rayed
yellow sun, the size of a large dinner plate, with its group of lesser
six-rayed orbs as large as saucers, did not startle Patience as
much as the rug beside the Squire's bed. That was made of a brindle
cow-skin with--the horns on. The little girl's fascinated gaze rested
on these bristling horns and could not tear itself away. Across the
foot of the Squire's bed lay a great iron bar; that was a housewifely
scheme of his own to keep the clothes well down at the foot. But
Patience's fertile imagination construed it into a dire weapon of
punishment.

The Squire was sitting at his old cherry desk. He turned around and
looked at Patience sharply from under his shaggy, ov