ouse,
and all sorts of nice things; and you can do better without me than he
can, for he has got nothing to love but me, poor grampa!"

And her eyes filled with sudden tears, as she thought of him tramping
on his lonely walks over the hills.

"We do not mean to speak unkindly of your grandfather, my dear," the
squire said gently. "I have never seen him, you know, and John has
never seen him but once. I have thought, all these years, bitterly of
him; but perhaps I have been mistaken. He has ever been kind and good
to you, and, above all, he has given you back to me, and that will make
me think differently of him, in future. We all make mistakes, you know,
and I have made terrible mistakes, and have been terribly punished for
them. I daresay I have made a mistake here; but whether or no, you
shall never hear a word, from me, against the man who has been so kind
to you."

"And you will let me see him sometimes, grandpapa?" the child said,
taking his hand pleadingly. "He said, if you said no, I must do as you
told me; because somehow you are nearer to me than he is, though I
don't know how that can be. But you won't say that, will you? For, oh!
I know he is so lonely without me, and I should never be happy,
thinking of him all alone, not if you were to be ever so kind to me,
and to give me all sorts of grand things."

"No, my dear, I certainly shall not say so. You shall see him as often
as you like."

"Oh, thank you, grandpapa!" she exclaimed joyfully, and she held up her
face to kiss him.

The squire lifted her in his arms, and held her closely to him.

"John," he said, "you must tell Mrs. Morcombe to get a room ready for
my granddaughter, at once, and you had better bring the tea in here,
and then we will think of other things. I feel quite bewildered, at
present."

When John returned with the tea, Aggie was sitting on the squire's
knee. She was perfectly at home, now, and had been chattering to him of
her life with her grandfather, and had just related the incident of her
narrow escape from drowning.

"Do you hear that, John?" the squire said. "She was nearly drowned
here, within sight of our home, and I might never have known anything
about it. It seems that lad of Dr. Walsham's saved her life. He is a
fine lad. He was her champion, you know, in that affair with my nephew.
How strange that the two boys should have quarrelled over my
granddaughter!"

"Yes, squire, and young Walsham came well out of it!" Jo