e overhanging rocks into the broad river, which glittered
in the moonlight like a sheet of dazzling silver, roughened by the
slightest ripple, and past point after point of luxuriant foliage,
looking dream-like and unreal in the light that silvered their
glistening leaves.

As they neared the village, Lucy suddenly recollected their unexpected
guest. "I wonder how Nelly got home! Did she stay long after we left,
Alick?" she said.

"No; she said her mother would be angry if she were out late, so she
set off at a run."

"Lucy," said Stella, "I wonder how you can have anything to do with
such a vagabond-looking child! I'm sure she was watching to see
whether she could pick up anything; and she looked just like a gipsy."

"Oh, Stella! how can you be so suspicious?" exclaimed Lucy
indignantly. "I don't believe Nelly would do any such thing! No wonder
the poor child was watching us while we were at tea; didn't you see
how hungry she was?"

"Well, I know we've had things stolen by just such children, and papa
says it's best to keep such people down; for they're sure to impose on
those who are kind to them, and charity is quite thrown away upon
them."

"A convenient belief to save trouble," Lucy was just going to say, but
wisely repressed the impulse, feeling that it would not sound very
respectful to Stella's father, who, she felt, must be a very different
man from her own.

"Stella," said Alick, "did it ever occur to you what you might have
been if you had been left, motherless and almost fatherless, to run
all day on the streets, listening to bad words and seeing all sorts of
evil, without any one to say a kind word to you and teach you what is
right? I wish you could have heard the poor little thing's story as
she told it to me." And in a few words he gave them an outline of
Nelly's history.

"Papa says you never can believe their stories," objected the
city-hardened Stella.

"I know you can't always," replied Alick; "but I think I'm not easily
taken in, and I'm willing to stake my judgment on this being no sham.
And how would _you_ have turned out from such a bringing-up,
Mademoiselle Stella?"

"And where is her father?" Lucy asked.

"Oh, her father works on a boat, and is seldom at home. They came to
live here because it is cheaper, and they can have a pig and raise
potatoes."

"I wonder whether she can read," said Lucy.

"I shouldn't think so, for she never was at school in her life, nor at
church eit