lf? I will touch glasses with you, my boy,
and thank you very much for your charade."

Just as Rolf was raising his glass towards his father's to drink his
health, a terrible shriek arose, "It is burning, it is burning!" Everybody
ran from under the apple-tree; Battiste and Trine came from the house with
tubs and buckets, Hans from the stable with a pail in each hand; all
screaming and shouting together.

"The bush is on fire! the hedge is on fire!" There was terrible noise and
confusion.

"Dora! Dora!" cried a voice of distress from the cottage behind the hedge,
and Dora rose from her hiding place and hurried into the house. She had
been so completely absorbed by what had been taking place under the
apple-tree, though indeed she saw and heard but imperfectly, that she had
entirely forgotten everything else, and it was full two hours that she had
been lying all doubled up in the gap under the hedge.

Her aunt was flying back and forth, complaining and scolding. She had
collected all her things from the drawers and the presses, and heaped them
together, ready for flight.

"Aunt Ninette," said the little girl timidly, for she knew she had staid
out too long, "you need not be frightened; it is all dark again in the
garden; the fire is all out."

Her aunt cast a rapid glance from the window, and saw that this was true;
everything was dark, even the last lantern extinguished. Some one was
moving about among the trees, evidently to make sure that all was safe.

"This is too terrible! Who would have believed that such things could
happen?" said Aunt Ninette, half scolding, half-whimpering. "Go to bed now
Dora. To-morrow we will move away, and find another house, or leave the
place altogether."

The child obeyed quickly, and went up to her little bedroom, but it was
long, very long, before she could sleep. She still saw the illuminated
garden, the sparkling apple tree, and the father and mother with their
happy children gathered about them. She thought of the time when she too
could tell her father everything, and the thought doubled her sense of her
own loneliness, and of the happiness of those other children.

And the child had become so much interested in the life beyond the hedge,
and so almost fond of that good father and mother, whom she had been
watching, that the thought of going away again as her aunt threatened, was
a very sad one. She could not go to sleep. Presently she seemed to see the
children with thei