her attention, and she "loved him for the dangers he had passed;"
loved him, not as Desdemona loved, but as a child loves. She was sure
now that he was not a bad boy; that even a good boy might do such a
thing as run away from cruel and exacting guardians.

"What a strange story, Harry! How near you came to being drowned in
the river! I wonder the man had not killed you! And then they wanted
to send you to prison for setting the barn afire!" exclaimed Julia,
when he had finished the story.

"I came pretty near it; that's a fact!" replied Harry, warming under
the approbation of his partial auditor.

"And you killed the big dog?"

"I don't know; I hope I didn't."

"But you didn't steal the horse?"

"I didn't mean to steal him."

"No one could call that stealing. But what are you going to do next,
Harry?"

"I am going to Boston."

"What will you do when you get there?"

"I can go to work."

"You are not big enough to work much."

"I can do a good deal."

For some time longer they discussed Harry's story, and Julia regretted
the necessity of leaving him to do her errand at Mrs. Lane's. She
promised to see him when she returned, and Harry walked down to the
brook to get a drink, while she continued on her way.

Our hero was deeply interested in the little girl. Like the "great
guns" in the novels, he was sure she was no ordinary character. He was
fully satisfied in relation to the providential nature of their
meeting. She had been sent by that incomprehensible something to
furnish him with food, and he trembled when he thought what might have
happened if she had not come.

"I can't be a very bad boy," thought he, "or she would not have liked
me. Mr. Nason used to say he could tell an ugly horse by the looks of
his eye; and the schoolmaster last winter picked out all the bad boys
at a glance. I can't be a very bad boy, or she would have found me
out. I _know_ I am not a bad boy. I feel right, and try to do right."

Harry's investigation invested Julia Bryant with a thousand poetical
excellences. That she felt an interest in him--one so good as she--was
enough to confirm all the noble resolutions he had made, and give him
strength to keep them; and as he seated himself by the brook, he
thought over his faults, and renewed his determination to uproot them
from his character. His meeting with the "little angel," as he chose
to regard her, was an oasis in the desert--a place where his moral
nature could dr