er if he'd come back the same as he went away. But he is
a changed man. He happened to go into a revival meeting one night this
spring and he got converted. And he's come home to stay, and he says
he's never going to drink another drop, but he's going to look after his
family. Ma isn't to do any more washing for nobody but him and me, and
I'm not to be a hired boy any longer. He says I can stay with your Uncle
Roger till the fall 'cause I promised I would, but after that I'm to
stay home and go to school right along and learn to be whatever I'd like
to be. I tell you it made me feel queer. Everything seemed to be upset.
But he gave ma forty dollars--every cent he had--so I guess he really is
converted."

"I hope it will last, I'm sure," said Felicity. She did not say it
nastily, however. We were all glad for Peter's sake, though a little
dizzy over the unexpectedness of it all.

"This is what I'D like to know," said Peter. "How did Peg Bowen know my
father was coming home? Don't you tell me she isn't a witch after that."

"And she knew about your Aunt Olivia's wedding, too," added Sara Ray.

"Oh, well, she likely heard that from some one. Grown up folks talk
things over long before they tell them to children," said Cecily.

"Well, she couldn't have heard father was coming home from any one,"
answered Peter. "He was converted up in Maine, where nobody knew him,
and he never told a soul he was coming till he got here. No, you can
believe what you like, but I'm satisfied at last that Peg is a witch and
that skull of hers does tell her things. She told me father was coming
home and he come!"

"How happy you must be," sighed Sara Ray romantically. "It's just like
that story in the Family Guide, where the missing earl comes home to his
family just as the Countess and Lady Violetta are going to be turned out
by the cruel heir."

Felicity sniffed.

"There's some difference, I guess. The earl had been imprisoned for
years in a loathsome dungeon."

Perhaps Peter's father had too, if we but realized it--imprisoned in the
dungeon of his own evil appetites and habits, than which none could
be more loathsome. But a Power, mightier than the forces of evil, had
struck off his fetters and led him back to his long-forfeited liberty
and light. And no countess or lady of high degree could have welcomed a
long-lost earl home more joyfully than the tired little washerwoman had
welcomed the erring husband of her youth.

But in Pet