d came back to Rotherwood the next day a sadder and a
wiser man.

"Well, and what did Mrs. Martin say?" asked Malcolm when he saw Caleb
again.

The little cobbler drew his hand across his eyes in an embarrassed
fashion; he was evidently trying to recollect something.

"Ma'am sends her humble duty," he answered presently in a sing-song
voice, "and she is greatly obliged to you and the kind lady, and Kit
may stay along of Mrs. Sullivan--those were her very words, sir."

"Mrs. Martin is a sensible woman then."

"Oh, she is that, sir. She was scolding me all supper-time for not
thinking of the child's good. 'You can bring her back if you like,
Caleb,' she says, 'and poison her with the filthy fogs, and get her
ready for her coffin, poor lamb. And you call yourself a father, Caleb
Martin? Drat all such fathers, I say!' She made me clean ashamed of
myself, did Ma'am;" and here the little man looked ready to cry.

"Well, Mr. Martin, I do think the child will be better here, and you
can come down every three weeks or so to see her--you know we have
arranged that--and now and then you can bring your wife too;" and Caleb
brightened up at this.

But the day he left Rotherwood he was so lugubrious and tearful that
Malcolm felt quite sorry for him; but Kit took a less depressing view.

"I don't want you to go, dad," she said feelingly; "but I like staying
along with this good lady," with a friendly nod of her head to Mrs.
Sullivan. "I have got a black kitten of my own and a yellow chick, and
they are better than dolls because they can love me back. And the
ladies from the Wood House are going to take me out for drives--my,
won't that be 'eavenly!" Nevertheless Kit shed a few tears when Caleb
closed the little gate behind him. "I want to stay here, and I want
daddy too," she said rather pitifully.

All these weeks Malcolm had seen nothing of Cedric. His visit to the
Jacobis had been prolonged for another ten days, and then he wrote, in
high spirits, to tell his sisters that Dick Wallace had invited him to
go down to his father's place in Scotland.

"I expect I shall have rare sport there, and stalk a deer or two," he
continued. "Dick and I are to go down by the night mail on Thursday,
but I will run over to Staplegrove for a few hours. Tell Herrick I will
look him up at his diggings."

By some oversight Elizabeth forgot to give Malcolm this message, and
Malcolm, who had to go up to town on business, was much chagrined to