" the girl asked. "They think I'm so stupid,
but I ain't quite so stupid as I look. I don't forget. I wasn't as old
as you are when Lucy Murdoch was married, but I remember it. What were
you doing on that road when she found you?" she asked suddenly.

"We had run away from home," Elsie replied falteringly, for at the
thought of home she felt ready to cry.

"My goodness! you can't be the two children what was lost off a moor
somewhere up Deeside."

"How did you know it?" Elsie cried eagerly. "Has mother been here?"

"Oh, no! It's posted up at the police station," the girl replied. "They
always have all such things up there: a description of you, and
everything. Your mother goes and tells the police, and they has it
printed, and sends it about everywhere. Lucy Murdoch is after the
reward, I'll be bound!"

All this was quite unintelligible to Elsie, who knew nothing of rewards
or police regulations. Only one thing she learnt, and that was that they
were being sought for, and she hoped some one would find them. A slight
misgiving crossed her mind as to whether the police could take her to
prison for having run away; but this did not trouble her very much, for
she felt sure that Mrs. MacDougall would never let any bad thing befall
them, and no one else could have told the police to search.

"I suppose I should just get it if I was found in here," the girl said
presently. "You won't go telling, I suppose; for if they thought I knew
too much, they'd----" the sentence ended with a grimace and expressive
shrug of the shoulders.

Again the girl held the jar to Duncan's parched lips. "I dursn't stay,"
she said, kindly; "but if you knock at this wall I shall hear, and I'll
come if you want me. We're up at the top, so there's no one to pry down
the stairs. He do seem real bad, poor little chap! but maybe he'll be
better in the morning."

With these words she departed, locking the door after her; and Elsie
somehow felt that, in spite of her rough looks and miserable appearance,
she had found a friend.

CHAPTER XIII.--A DREADFUL NIGHT.

The pangs of hunger which Elsie was feeling pretty sharply were nothing
compared to the pain of mind she was enduring; for although she was the
child of poor people, and had lived all her life in a cottage, with
plain fare and plenty to do, she had been accustomed to perfect
cleanliness, and a good deal of simple comfort.

After a while she undressed herself, and crept into the not too c