lay looking at the stars
overhead thinking, with rather a heavy heart. The nearer they got to the
children's home the more anxious he became, not on their account but on
his own. It would be so dreadful to be turned adrift again, and, in
spite of all the little people's promises, he could not feel sure that
the old gentleman and lady would care to have anything to say to him.

"I'm such a rough one and I've been with such a bad lot," thought the
poor boy to himself while the tears came to his eyes. But he looked up
at the stars again, and somehow their calm cheerful shining seemed to
give him courage. He had been on the point of deciding that as soon as
he was quite sure of the children's safety he would run away, without
letting himself be seen at all, though where he should run to or what
would become of him he had not the least idea! But the silvery light
overhead reminded him somehow of his beautiful dream, for it illumined
the boat and the water and the trees as if they were painted by fairy
fingers.

"It's come right so far, leastways as far as a dream could be like to
real things," he reflected. "I don't see why it shouldn't come right all
through. Just to think how proud I'd be if they'd make me stable-boy, or
gardener's lad maybe, and I could feel I were earning something and had
a place o' my own in the world. That's what mother would 'a wished for
me. 'Never mind how humble you are if you're earning your bread
honest-like,' I've oft heard her say. Poor mother, she'd be glad to know
I was out o' that lot anyway," and Tim's imagination pointed back to the
gipsy caravan. "All, saving Diana--what a lot they are, to be sure! I'm
sure and I hope she'll get out of it some day. 'Tis best to hope anyway,
so I'll try not to be down-hearted," and again Tim glanced up at the
lovely sky. "If I could but make a good guess now which of them there
stars is heaven, or the way into it anyway, I'd seem to know better-like
where poor mother is, and I'd look for it every night. I'm going to try
to be a better lad, mother dear. I can promise you that, and somehow I
can't help thinking things 'll come straighter for me."

And then Tim curled himself round like a dormouse, and shut up his
bright merry eyes, and in five minutes was fast asleep.

He had kept awake later than he knew probably, for the next morning's
sun was higher in the skies than he had intended it should be when a
slight shake of his arm and a not unfriendly thou