Robbie was your
favourite more than me and Duncan. I thought he must be your little boy,
and that we were not. You did buy Robbie more things, and never sent him
for the milk."

"Ye're right enough, Elsie," Mrs. MacDougall said, with a sigh. "There's
many a time, when I've been sore pressed, I've been tempted to take the
money that Robbie's father sent to buy the clothes you and Duncan were
in need of; but I've always stood against it, and never spent a penny of
that money for any other purpose than the right one, and I've taken
care of the child more jealously than if he was my own. But the Evil One
himself must have put it in your heart to be jealous of that poor little
lad. With all my care, I doubt that he'll ever see manhood. And as for
the letter, I think I know the one you mean. If you found it, you'd no
call to read it."

"But I read it, and I kept it," Elsie confessed, seeing that her mother
had quite failed to comprehend all that she had tried to tell her. "It
was for that I wanted to run away--to go and find who I thought was our
own father--and I took Duncan with me. I thought it would be easy. I
didn't mean to hurt Duncan."

"I will be no harsh to you, Elsie," Mrs. MacDougall said, sorrowfully.
"It's a sore thing for a mother to think of; but God has taught you His
lesson in His own way. I doubt you'll never do the like again."

It was only by degrees that Mrs. MacDougall heard the whole history of
the children's wanderings, or Elsie fully understood the terrible
dangers to which she had, by her own act, willingly exposed herself and
Duncan. Never had she fully realised what the word "home" meant until
returning to it, after having been homeless, lonely, and outcast, she
was received with the glad welcome that no one else in all the wide
world would have extended to her.

Mrs. MacDougall was, like many of her race, a woman of few words, and
not given to demonstrations of affection, yet with a deeply-rooted,
fervent feeling of attachment to her own flesh and blood that nothing
could destroy, that was only equalled by her strong sense of religious
duty. In that terrible week of suspense, when she received no tidings of
the missing children, her hair had become grey, and her face aged by
many years. In seeking them out, she had spent unhesitatingly the
hardly-scraped savings of years, laid by for the decent burying of her
old mother and herself. These facts spoke more strongly than words. Even
Elsie knew