ring a few minutes, gradually dispersed.

"Oh, you dear monkey! How could you run away? You naughty, naughty
Don Blossom! Was he cold and wet and hungry and frightened? But he's
safe now, and he shall have his breakfast directly; so he shall, the
dear blessed!"

While Sabella was so much engrossed with her pet as to be unmindful of
all else, the man who had restored him to her stood just within the
doorway and watched her, with an amused smile.

"So he is your monkey, is he? I thought he must be when I first saw
him," he said at length.

"Yes, indeed, he is; and I have been feeling so badly at losing him.
But where did you find him, and how did you know he was mine?" Here
the little girl looked for the first time into the stranger's face.
"Why, you are the very same one--"

"Yes," he replied, quietly, "I am the very same one whom you reminded
of his own little girl, and who has thought of you very often since. I
didn't know that you had reached this place, or I should have come to
see you before. I found this monkey a little while ago in possession
of some boys who were teasing him, and thought I recognized him as soon
as I saw him. I became certain he was yours when some of the boys said
they had seen him on a show-boat last evening, and that, after they had
had some fun with him, they were going to bring him down here and claim
a reward. As I wanted the pleasure of bringing him back to you myself,
I bought him of them, and here he is."

"Then you are not a bad man, as Winn said, but a very good one, as I
told him, and now I can prove it!" exclaimed Sabella, with a note of
joyous triumph in her voice. "I'm ever and ever so much obliged to
you, and I only wish I could see your little girl to tell her what a
splendid father she has."

"Who is Winn? And what makes him think I am a bad man?" inquired the
stranger, curiously.

"Oh, he's a boy, a big boy, that has lost a raft that we are helping
him find, and he thinks you stole it. So he says you are a bad man;
but I know you are not, and you wouldn't do such a mean thing as to
steal a boy's raft, would you?"

"Well, no," hesitated the stranger, greatly taken aback by this
unexpected disclosure and abrupt question. "No, of course not," he
added, recovering himself. "I wouldn't steal a raft, or anything else,
from a boy, though I might occasionally borrow a thing that I needed
very much. But where is this Winn boy now? And where is your uncle?"