foot speechless by the counter, where she had put
the basket.

"What do you say Jack stole?"

"My little cash-box, the night he ran away; but I don't want to be hard
on the boy--my only sister's child. I'll forgive him if he'll confess."

Bet stood pondering for another moment, and then she said--

"I've got another errand to do. I'll come back for the basket."

And Bet was off, as if on the wings of the wind--off to the Denes and
the little lonely red-brick house, which was shut up and had a board on
a pole in the front garden, with "To Let. Inquire for the key at Mr.
Skinner's, Market Row," painted in white letters on it.

Bet looked right and left; there was no one in sight, and she went
round to the back, and found, to her great joy, an old trowel with half
the handle broken, which she seized eagerly. She went down on her
hands and knees, and dug and burrowed with her fingers in the soft,
sandy soil. Her heart beat wildly with hope and fear; her hat fell
back, and her tawny hair fell over her shoulders. The light of the
April evening was waning; she had not a moment to lose.

"It was here--it was here--it must have been just here," she cried.
Some people passing on the raised path where Uncle Bobo had sat on the
evening of little Miss Joy's accident turned to look at her once, and
wondered what she was doing, digging there on hands and knees.

At last Bet stopped, and, raising her head and clasping her hands,
said--

"Little Miss Joy would tell me to pray to God to help me to find it.
He would hear _her_. Will He hear me, I wonder?"

Then poor Bet uttered a few words, calling on God, who saw everything,
to show her where what she sought lay hid.

She redoubled her efforts, and moving a little further from the house,
she dug another hole till she came to some bricks. She lifted them,
and there was the little cash-box--empty now, but, oh! of what
priceless value!

Bet gathered up her stray tools, and putting on her hat, ran off again
along the sand by the sea-shore, now left hard by the retreating tide,
on and on to the farther end of that part of Yarmouth where a road,
then lately made, led towards Gorlestone. Breathless and panting she
reached the first of two pretty houses standing together, with a strip
of garden in front, bright now with wallflowers and hardy hepaticas and
celandines.

Under the porch of the first, smoking his pipe, sat Uncle Bobo; and
warmly covered with a rug, in a recl