er very long before her master and mistress
returned; yet it was hardly eleven o'clock. She heard the loud,
hearty Lancashire voices on the stairs; and, for the first time, she
understood the contrast of the desolation of the poor man who had so
lately gone forth in lonely despair.

It almost put her out of patience to see Mrs Openshaw come in,
calmly smiling, handsomely dressed, happy, easy, to inquire after her
children.

'Did Ailsie go to sleep comfortably?' she whispered to Norah.

'Yes.'

Her mother bent over her, looking at her slumbers with the soft eyes
of love. How little she dreamed who had looked on her last! Then she
went to Edwin, with perhaps less wistful anxiety in her countenance,
but more of pride. She took off her things, to go down to supper.
Norah saw her no more that night.

Beside having a door into the passage, the sleeping-nursery opened
out of Mr and Mrs Openshaw's room, in order that they might have
the children more immediately under their own eyes. Early the next
summer's morning, Mrs Openshaw was awakened by Ailsie's startled call
of 'Mother! mother!' She sprang up, put on her dressing-gown, and went
to her child. Ailsie was only half awake, and in a not unusual state
of terror.

'Who was he, mother? Tell me!'

'Who, my darling? No one is here. You have been dreaming, love. Waken
up quite. See, it is broad daylight.'

'Yes,' said Ailsie, looking round her; then clinging to her mother,
'but a man was here in the night, mother.'

'Nonsense, little goose. No man has ever come near you!'

'Yes, he did. He stood there. Just by Norah. A man with hair and a
beard. And he knelt down and said his prayers. Norah knows he was
here, mother' (half angrily, as Mrs Openshaw shook her head in smiling
incredulity).

'Well! we will ask Norah when she comes,' said Mrs Openshaw,
soothingly. 'But we won't talk any more about him now. It is not five
o'clock; it is too early for you to get up. Shall I fetch you a book
and read to you?'

'Don't leave me, mother,' said the child, clinging to her. So Mrs
Openshaw sat on the bedside talking to Ailsie, and telling her of what
they had done at Richmond the evening before, until the little girl's
eyes slowly closed and she once more fell asleep.

'What was the matter?' asked Mr Openshaw, as his wife returned to bed.

'Ailsie wakened up in a fright, with some story of a man having been
in the room to say his prayers--a dream, I suppose.' And no more was