and
the meeting was most joyful to them and to her. They told at full
length every particular of their anxious search after their child, which
was ended by a gentleman bringing a newspaper to their house, containing
the welcome intelligence that she was safe at Micajah Warner's.

Amy and Orphy were desirous of retaining little Dinah in the family, and
as the child's parents seemed very willing, the girls urged their mother
to keep her instead of Chloe, who, they said, could very easily be made
over to Israel. But to the astonishment of the whole family, Israel on
this occasion proved refractory, declaring that he would not allow his
wife to be plagued with such an imp as Chloe, and that he chose to have
little Dinah herself, if her parents would bind her to him till she was
eighteen.

This affair was soon satisfactorily arranged.

Israel was married at the appointed time, and took possession of the
house near the saw-mill. He prospered; and in a few years was able to
buy a farm of his own, and to build a stone-house on it. Dinah turned
out extremely well, and the Warner family still talk of the night when
she was discovered in the cart of the travelling tinman.

STORY THREE, CHAPTER 1.

THE BEAUTIFUL GATE.

One morning, by break of day, old Josiah, who lived in the little
cottage he had built, on the borders of the Great Forest, found his wife
awake long before him--indeed she had scarcely closed her eyes that
night; and she was ready to speak the moment his eyes opened; for she
had promised their dear Tiny, their only child, that she would have a
private talk with his father. So she said in a low, but distinct voice,
as though she were talking to herself:

"I have nursed him, and watched over him year after year. He has been
like the sun shining in my path, and precious as a flower. There is not
another like him. I love him better than I do my eyes. If he were away
I might as well be blind."

"That puts me in mind of what I've been dreaming," said the old man.
"If I was only sure that he would come at last to the Beautiful Gate, I
wouldn't say another word. But who can tell? And it it actually
happened that he lost his sight--poor Tiny!"

Josiah did not finish what he had begun to say, but hid his face in the
bed-clothes, and then the good wife knew that he was weeping, and her
own tears began to fall, and she could not say a word.

After breakfast, when Josiah had gone off into the woods, th