an, and with that, as a shadow fell on
the rock, she lifted her eyes and uttered a little cry.

Just above, on the flat tombstone that jutted over the ridge, stood a
beautiful lady, and looked down on them.

CHAPTER XIII

THE LADY FROM THE SEA

How it happened the children never precisely knew. When they came to
compare notes that evening their recollections varied on several
important particulars. But this was certain, that before they could
rise and run--and Matthew Henry protested that, for his part, he had
never an idea of running--the apparition had stepped down from her
pedestal and seated herself among them in the friendliest way.

"Good day!" she nodded. "Now let me see ... this is Annet, and this is
Linnet, and that is Matthew Henry, and I hope you're all uncommonly
well."

Annet gasped that they were quite well, thank you. Who and what could
she be, this lady out of nowhere?... Not a witch, for no witch could
smile with such a beautiful face or wear such beautiful clothes. On the
other hand, Annet had not supposed that fairies were ever so tall. Yet
something of the sort she must be, for she knew their names....

"You want to know where I come from? But that is easy." The stranger
reached out a white hand with a diamond upon it, and Annet yielded the
book to her without resisting. "I come from here"--and she tapped the
pages mysteriously.

"But how can that be?" demanded Linnet, who was always the
matter-of-fact one. "Out of a book! Such things do not happen."

Vashti laughed merrily. "I assure you," she answered, with a glance at
the fly-leaf, "I have been in the book all the while you were reading;
and," she added, her eyes softening as they rested on the child, "of
you three it is Linnet who is most like her mother."

They had not thought of this before, but she had no sooner said it than
they knew it to be the truth; and the discovery made her more
marvellous than ever.

"Yes," she went on, "I have lived inside this book; and, what is more,
I know the man who wrote it."

She looked around on the three faces; and--so strange are children--for
the first time in his life Matthew Henry at once asserted himself as a
person entirely different from his sisters. For Annet and Linnet merely
looked puzzled; to them the book was a book, just as the hill upon
which they sat was a hill, and they had never troubled their heads
about such a thing as an author. But Matthew Henry opened his infantine