d Oswald went back to the
others.

Games, however unusually splendid, have to come to an end. And when the
games were over and it was tea, and the village children were sent away,
and Oswald went to call Dora and the prisoner's son, he found nothing
but Dora, and he saw at once, in his far-sighted way, that she had been
crying.

It was one of the A1est days we ever had, and the drive home was good,
but Dora was horribly quiet, as though the victim of dark interior
thoughts.

And the next day she was but little better.

We were all paddling on the sands, but Dora would not. And presently
Alice left us and went back to Dora, and we all saw across the sandy
waste that something was up.

And presently Alice came down and said--

"Dry your feet and legs and come to a council. Dora wants to tell you
something."

We dried our pink and sandy toes and we came to the council. Then Alice
said: "I don't think H.O. is wanted at the council, it isn't anything
amusing; you go and enjoy yourself by the sea, and catch the nice little
crabs, H.O. dear."

H.O. said: "You always want me to be out of everything. I can be
councils as well as anybody else."

"Oh, H.O.!" said Alice, in pleading tones, "not if I give you a
halfpenny to go and buy bulls-eyes with?"

So then he went, and Dora said--

"I can't think how I could do it when you'd all trusted me so. And yet I
couldn't help it. I remember Dicky saying when you decided to give it me
to take care of--about me being the most trustworthy of all of us. I'm
not fit for any one to speak to. But it did seem the really right thing
at the time, it really and truly did. And now it all looks different."

"What has she done?" Dicky asked this, but Oswald almost knew.

"Tell them," said Dora, turning over on her front and hiding her face
partly in her hands, and partly in the sand.

"She's given all Miss Sandal's money to that little boy that the father
of was in prison," said Alice.

"It was one pound thirteen and sevenpence halfpenny," sobbed Dora.

"You ought to have consulted us, I do think, really," said Dicky. "Of
course, I see you're sorry now, but I do think that."

"How could I consult you?" said Dora; "you were all playing Cat and
Mouse, and he wanted to get home. I only wish you'd heard what he told
me--that's all--about his mother being ill, and nobody letting her do
any work because of where his father is, and his baby brother ill, poor
little darling, and not en