der sail bound off
Race Point toward the fishing grounds.

"Now, Anne, you had best go after Brownie and bring her back to her old
pasture. I like not the long tramp morning and night to milk the
creature," said Mrs. Stoddard, and she watched Anne, with the wooden doll
clasped in her arm, go obediently off on her errand.

A little smile crept over her face as she stood in the doorway. "Captain
Enos would like well that Anne be called Anne Stoddard," she said aloud;
"he begins to recall good traits in her father, and to think no other
child in the settlement has the spirit that our girl has. And I am well
pleased that it is so," she concluded with a little sigh, "for there will
be poor days ahead for us to bear, and had the captain not changed his
mind about Anne I should indeed have had hard work to manage," and she
turned back to her simple household tasks.

Anne went slowly up the sandy slope, stopping here and there to see if the
beach plums showed any signs of ripening, and turning now and then to see
if she could pick out Captain Enos's sail among the boats going swiftly
out toward the open sea.

As she came in sight of the little grove of maples her quick eyes saw a
man moving among them. Brownie was quietly feeding, evidently undisturbed.
Anne stopped, holding Martha very tightly, her eyes fixed upon the moving
figure. She was not afraid, but she wondered who it was, for she thought
that every man in the settlement had gone to the fishing grounds. As she
looked, something familiar in the man's movements sent her running toward
the grove.

"It is my father. I know it is my father," she whispered to herself. As
she came down the slope the man evidently saw her, for he came out from
the wood a little as if waiting for her.

"Anne, Anne!" he exclaimed, as she came near, and in a moment his arm was
around her and he was clasping her close.

"Come back in the wood, dear child," he said. "And you have not forgotten
your father?"

Anne smiled up at him happily. "I could never do that," she responded.
"See, here is my doll. Her name is Martha Stoddard Nelson."

"An excellent name," declared the man smilingly. "How neat and rosy you
look, Anne! You look as if you had fared well. Be they kind to you?"

"Oh, yes, father. They say now that I am their little girl. But I am not,"
and Anne shook her head smilingly. "I am my own father's little girl;
though I like them well," she added.

The two were seated on a gras