top them."

"No, no, you must not stop them," said Helen quietly. "These little
ebullitions must not be suppressed in that way--I mean with undue
severity."

"Then you really would not take--I mean send him back?"

"No," said Helen. "I think, perhaps, I could help you in all this."

"My dear Helen," cried the doctor eagerly. "My dear child, you don't
know how pleased you make me. I felt that for your sake I must take him
back."

"For my sake?" exclaimed Helen.

"Yes; that it was too bad to expose you to the petty annoyances and
troubles likely to come from keeping him. But if you feel that you
could put up with it till we have tamed him down--"

Helen rose from her chair, and went behind her father's, to lay her
hands upon his shoulders, when he took them in his, and crossed them
upon his breast, so as to draw her face down over his shoulder.

"My dear father," she said, as she laid her cheek against his, "I don't
know--I cannot explain, but this boy seems to have won his way with me
very strangely, and I should be deeply grieved if you sent him away."

"My dear Helen, you've taken a load off my mind. There, go and fetch
the poor fellow down. He wanted his dinner two hours ago, and he must
be starved."

Helen kissed her father's forehead, and went quietly up to Dexter's
room, listened for a few moments, heard a low sob, and then, softly
turning the handle of the door, she entered, to stand there, quite taken
aback.

The boy was crouched in a heap on the floor, sobbing silently, and with
his breast heaving with the agony of spirit he suffered.

For that she was prepared, but the tears rose in her eyes as she grasped
another fact. There, neatly folded and arranged, just as the Union
teaching had prompted him, were the clothes the boy had worn that day,
even to the boots placed under the chair, upon which they lay, while the
boy had taken out and dressed himself again in his old workhouse livery,
his cap lying on the floor by his side.

Helen crossed to him softly, bent over him, and laid her little white
hand upon his head.

The boy sprang to his feet as if he had felt a blow, and stood before
her with one arm laid across his eyes, as, in shame for his tears, he
bent his head.

"Dexter," she said again, "what are you going to do?"

"Going back again," he said hoarsely. "I'm such a bad un. They always
said I was."

"And is that the way to make yourself better?"

"I can't help it," he said,