after somersault in hilarious
glee.

A queer choking feeling came into Ann Wetherby's throat. She seemed
still to feel the loving clasp of those small young arms.

"Well, he--he's part angel, anyhow," she muttered, drawing a long
breath and watching with tear-dimmed eyes Bobby's antics on the grass
outside.

And Bobby stayed--not only Monday, but through four other long
days--days which he filled to the brim with fun and frolic and joyous
shouts as before--and yet with a change.

The shouts were less shrill and the yells less prolonged when Bobby was
near the house. No toads nor cats graced the parlor floor, and no bugs
nor snakes tortured Miss Wetherby's nerves when Bobby's bed was made
each day. The kitchen woodbox threatened to overflow--so high were its
contents piled--and Miss Wetherby was put to her wits' end to satisfy
Bobby's urgent clamorings for errands to run.

And when the four long days were over and Saturday came, a note--and
not Bobby--was sent to the city. The note was addressed to "Miss Ethel
Wetherby," and this is what Ethel's amazed eyes read:

_My Dear Niece_:--You can tell that singer man of Robert's that he is
not going back any more. He is going to live with me and go to school
next winter. I am going to adopt him for my very own. His father and
mother are dead--he said so.

I must close now, for Robert is hungry, and wants his dinner.

Love to all,
ANN WETHERBY.

The Lady in Black

The house was very still. In the little room over the porch the Lady
in Black sat alone. Near her a child's white dress lay across a chair,
and on the floor at her feet a tiny pair of shoes, stubbed at the toes,
lay where an apparently hasty hand had thrown them. A doll, head
downward, hung over a chair-back, and a toy soldier with drawn sword
dominated the little stand by the bed. And everywhere was silence--the
peculiar silence that comes only to a room where the clock has ceased
to tick.

The clock--such a foolish little clock of filigree gilt--stood on the
shelf at the foot of the bed; and as the Lady in Black looked at it she
remembered the wave of anger that had surged over her when she had
thrust out her hand and silenced it that night three months before. It
had seemed so monstrous to her that the pulse in that senseless thing
of gilt should throb on unheeding while below, on the little white bed,
that other pulse was so pitiably still. Hence she had thrust out her
hand and