ds, too, when they came, were hard and cold.
She only said, "So, Tom Lecky, you see what I have come to; rejoice in
it!"

"Does the little one want food?" Tom asked again, without noticing in
any way the words or the tone of the woman.

"And if it does?" said Anne, with a bitter little laugh.

"Why, if it does, I'm ready to give it some," said Tom, passing his
coat-sleeve before his eyes for a moment. Then removing it suddenly he
smiled into the woman's face--an April sort of smile, which scarcely
knows whether to cloud over or to beam out with full warmth--and said,
"And if you want anything I can give, it is yours for the taking."

The woman burst into tears, and the child, which was scarcely more than
a baby, cried to bear her company. It was then that little Dot came
forward and took the shawled bundle in her own baby arms, and commenced
to feed it from the milk-can.

"How is it you are so early?" inquired Tom anxiously, for he knew that
Anne's new home was many miles away.

"I have been here all night," she made answer.

"Anne, the cottage is still there, and the bit of furniture in it; go
there, Anne--go now."

So Anne went after all to the cottage, which had been so long prepared
for her, but it was not with Tom. He stayed at the mill with little
Dot. And every night, when the child lay sleeping, the brown mouse
crept out to bear the miller company. It was about this time that Tom
thought the mouse began to talk to him as it had talked with the
flowers in the garden the night he had found Dot.

"Miller," said the mouse, "is it not small things which make one happy?"

"Some things may content one, but it takes great ones to make one
happy," said he.

"Contentment is happiness," said the mouse.

Now while the mouse was speaking, the candle, which was, as we have
said, in the neck of a bottle instead of a candlestick, went out, and
dropped right to the bottom of the bottle. There was a tiny spark seen
for some time through the green glass, and by its light the miller saw
many strange things, and the mouse was mixed up with them all.

The first thing he saw was a misty little ladder, made apparently of
the cobwebs which festooned the mill. The ladder reached from the
table right up through the floor and through the next floor, and from
thence right up through the roof. A star was seen gleaming on its top.
Up this strange ladder the little mouse ran, and the miller saw it by
the light of the ti