step along and let 'ee
know that your little maid's all right," he said quietly, making no
mention of the seven long miles he had tramped after he had fed and
stabled his horse for the night.

"Anxious!" Lucy lay half fainting in her chair. Peter's face was white
and drawn with the anguish of the last few hours. Neither of them could
doubt any longer that Mona had been swept off the rock and out to sea.
Nothing else could have kept her, they thought. Patty and Philippa had
told where they had last seen her, but it was four o'clock before they had
come out of school and heard that she was missing. So the crowds
clustering about the shore had never any hope of finding her alive.

Peter Carne almost fainted, too, with the relief the stranger's words
brought him. The best he had dared to hope for when the knock came was
the news that Mona's body had been washed in. The revulsion of feeling
from despair to joy sent him reeling helpless into a chair.

Humphrey Dodds put out his arms and supported him gently. "I didn't know,
I ought to have thought, and told 'ee more careful like."

"Where is she?" gasped Lucy.

"Safe with her grandmother--and there I'd let her bide for a bit, if I was
you," he added, with a twinkle in his eye. "It'll do her good."

They tried to thank him, but words failed them both. They pressed him to
stay the night, he must be so tired, and it was so late, but he refused.
A walk was nothing to him, and he had to be at work by five the next
morning. "But I wouldn't say 'no' to a bit of supper," he said, knowing
quite well that they would all be better for some food.

Then, while Lucy got the meal ready, Peter went down to tell his good
news, and send the weary searchers to their homes.

Over their supper Mr. Dodds told them of Mona's pitiful little confession.
"It doesn't seem hardly fair to tell again what she told me, but I thought
it might help you to understand how she came to be so foolish. It don't
seem so bad when you know how it all came about."

When he had had his supper and a pipe, he started on his homeward way,
with but the faintest chance of meeting anyone at that hour who could give
him a lift over some of the long miles.

Little dreaming of the trouble she was causing, Mona, clad in one of her
grandmother's huge, plain night-gowns, and rolled up in blankets, slept on
the old sofa in the kitchen, as dreamlessly and placidly as though she
hadn't a care on her mind.

Ove