ot here, but that I
could be so certain he was just where he ought to be to insure the
safety of us all. How proud you must be of him, tonight! He is a
true, brave man, and I am proud to call him my friend. Did you know we
were schoolmates together?"

Hope looked up quickly, interested in spite of herself.

"That is it, then? I felt sure there was something, but he always
avoided our questions. Was it when you were a young lady."

"No, a little girl. We lived in the same neighborhood."

"You did? Why--but papa lived in America, near Boston."

"So did I."

"Then you _are_ American!" cried the girl, triumphantly.

The lady laughed a little.

"Have you guessed it? Yes, I was born on a small hill farm in
Massachusetts, and when a wee child used to trudge, barefooted, across
our pasture-lot to a little unpainted schoolhouse, on the cross-roads."

"_You_, Lady Moreham?" breathed Faith in amazement.

"Ah, yes, it was I," sighed the lady. "So memory tells me, at least,
but I can scarcely believe that the happy, care-free little creature,
who chased butterflies, and gathered the trailing arbutus in Spring,
and waded through the gorgeous October leaves in Fall, was my weary
self."

"And you really liked being--being--"

My lady laughed out at Hope's embarrassment in framing her question.

"Oh! Didn't I like it? I had two sisters and a brother. One sister
was a baby, and when the rest of us had done our 'stints' for the day,
we used to take her out with us in her little four-wheeled wagon father
had made her, and play by the hour--oh, so happily! I used to play at
being queen, I remember, and make crowns out of burdock burs, stuck
together, setting them on very softly over my curls in the coronation
scene, because they pricked me so. But in spite of the hurt I would
persist in wearing them. I sometimes wonder, is all that we do in
childhood but a foreshadowing of what is to follow? My crowns have
always cut me cruelly, but pride has kept me wearing them."

She drew herself up quickly, as if she had been thinking aloud, and
added,

"Your grandfather's farm adjoined ours, and your father and I were
playmates, and great friends. We were seldom separated till later,
when I was a strong, rosy-cheeked girl of sixteen and he a strapping
young lad, with a hankering for the sea. Well, we went our ways--he to
sail as cabin-boy in a merchantman, I to journey up to Boston and seek
service with some nice fa