y ever since you were a
boy! and to Ki Jones to peddle milk round Skipton Mills and Hull
Station! O pa!' says mistress, says she, 'have we got down so low as
that? Why 't would break our Ada's heart, and mine too, to see Star
hitched to a milk-cart. Rather than have you do that, says she, 'I'll go
in rags, and keep the children on mush and molasses;' and she put her
apron to her eyes.

"'Well, well, don't fret!' says master,--and I thought he looked kind o'
ashamed,--'I haven't sold him yet I've a notion to turn him out to
grass a while, and see what that'll do for him,' So the next day he put
me in this pasture.

"You see that plank bridge yonder, over the creek? That's where our Ada
fell into the water. Master has put up a railing, and made all safe
since the accident happened. 'T was a risky place always, though the
children have crossed it hundreds of times, and none of them ever
tumbled over before.

"But I hadn't been here a week, when one sunshiny afternoon our Ada came
through the pasture, on her way to visit the sick Simmonses--there's
always some of that tribe down with the chills. She came running up to
me--her little basket, full of goodies, on her arm,--stopped to talk a
minute and feed me an apple, and then passed along, while I went on
nibbling grass, till I heard a scream and a splash, and knew, all in a
minute, she must have fallen off the plank bridge into the water. Dear!
dear! what was to be done? I ran to the fence, and looked up and down
the road. Some men were burning brush at the far end of the next field.
I galloped toward them, and back again to the creek, and whinnied and
snorted, and tried my best to make them understand that they were
needed; but they didn't appear to notice, and I just made up my mind,
that if any thing was done to save our Ada from drowning, I was the one
to do it.

"I made my way through the alder-bushes down by the bank, to a place
where the current sets close in shore. At first I couldn't see any
thing, then all at once, there floated on the muddy water close to me,
the little red shawl she wore, then a hand and arm, and her white face
and brown hair all streaming. I caught at her clothes, and though Ada is
a stout girl of her age, and the wet things added a deal to her weight,
I lifted her well out of the water. I remember thinking, 'If only my
poor legs don't give out, I shall do very well,' And they didn't give
out, for when help came--it seems those men in the