age.

Mrs. Brown read the telegram gravely, lifted her pretty eyebrows, turned
the paper over, and looked on the other side, and then, in a remote and
chilling voice, asked me if she understood me to say that the mother was
coming also.

"Oh, dear no!" I exclaimed with considerable relief. "The mother is
dead, you know. Sylvester, that is my friend who sent this, shot her
when the baby was only three days old." But the expression of Mrs.
Brown's face at this moment was so alarming, that I saw that nothing
but the fullest explanation would save me. Hastily, and I fear not very
coherently, I told her all.

She relaxed sweetly. She said I had frightened her with my talk about
lions. Indeed, I think my picture of poor Baby, albeit a trifle highly
colored, touched her motherly heart. She was even a little vexed at what
she called Sylvester's "hard-heartedness." Still I was not without some
apprehension. It was two months since I had seen him; and Sylvester's
vague allusion to his "slinging an ugly left" pained me. I looked at
sympathetic little Mrs. Brown; and the thought of Watson's pups covered
me with guilty confusion.

Mrs. Brown had agreed to sit up with me until he arrived. One o'clock
came, but no Baby. Two o'clock, three o'clock, passed. It was almost
four when there was a wild clatter of horses' hoofs outside, and with
a jerk a wagon stopped at the door. In an instant I had opened it, and
confronted a stranger. Almost at the same moment, the horses attempted
to run away with the wagon.

The stranger's appearance was, to say the least, disconcerting. His
clothes were badly torn and frayed; his linen sack hung from his
shoulders like a herald's apron; one of his hands was bandaged; his face
scratched; and there was no hat on his dishevelled head. To add to the
general effect, he had evidently sought relief from his woes in drink;
and he swayed from side to side as he clung to the door-handle, and, in
a very thick voice, stated that he had "suthin" for me outside. When he
had finished, the horses made another plunge.

Mrs. Brown thought they must be frightened at something.

"Frightened!" laughed the stranger with bitter irony. "Oh, no! Hossish
ain't frightened! On'y ran away four timesh comin' here. Oh, no!
Nobody's frightened. Every thin's all ri'. Ain't it, Bill?" he said,
addressing the driver. "On'y been overboard twish; knocked down a
hatchway once. Thash nothin'! On'y two men unner doctor's han's at
Sto