"Dolly Stewart is the
very one to help me. She has not been bred and brought up like Alice,
but she has plenty of keen woman's wit, and she has all a sister's love
for me, besides. I 'll just go and tell her how we parted, and I 'll ask
her frankly what she says to it."

Cheered by this bright idea, he pursued his way in better spirits, and
soon reached the little path which wound off from the high-road through
the fields to the Burnside. Not a spot there unassociated with memories,
but they were the memories of early boyhood. The clump of white thorns
they used to call the Forest, and where they went to hunt wild beasts;
the little stream they fancied a great and rapid river, swarming with
alligators; the grassy slope, where they had their house, and the tiny
garden whose flowers, stuck down at daybreak, were withered before
noon!--too faithful emblems of the joys they illustrated!

"Surely," thought he, "no boy had ever such a rare playfellow as Dolly;
so ready to take her share in all the rough vicissitudes of a boy's
pleasures, and yet to bring to them a sort of storied interest and
captivation which no mere boy could ever have contributed. What a little
romance the whole was,--just because she knew how to impart the charm of
a story to all they did and all they planned!"

It was thus thinking that he entered the cottage. So still was
everything that he could hear the scratching noise of a pen as a rapid
writer's hand moved over the paper. He peeped cautiously in and saw
Dolly seated, writing busily at a table all strewn over with manuscript:
an open book, supported by other books, lay before her, at which from
time to time she glanced.

Before Tony had advanced a step she turned round and saw him. "Was it
not strange, Tony?" said she, and she flushed as she spoke. "I felt that
you were there before I saw you; just like long ago, when I always knew
where you were hid."

"I was just thinking of that same long ago, Dolly," said he, taking a
chair beside her, "as I came up through the fields. There everything is
the same as it used to be when we went to seek our fortune across the
sandy desert, near the Black Lake."

"No," said she, correcting; "the Black Lake was at the foot of Giant's
Rock, beyond the rye-field."

"So it was, Dolly; you are right."

"Ah, Master Tony, I suspect I have a better memory of those days than
you have. To be sure, I have not had as many things happening in the
mean while to trouble