bered Belinda.

Mell shut her eyes tight. She was too frightened to move. She felt
herself clutched, dragged in-doors, upstairs, and her ears boxed, all
in a moment. Mrs. Davis pushed her violently forward, a door banged, a
key turned.

"There you stay for a week, and on bread and water," cried a voice
through the keyhole; and Mell, opening her eyes, found herself in the
dark and alone. She knew very well where she was,--in the closet under
the attic stairs; a place she dreaded, because she had once seen a mouse
there, and Mell was particularly afraid of mice.

"Oh, don't shut me up here! Please don't; please let me out, please,"
she shrieked. But Mrs. Davis had gone downstairs, and nobody replied.

"They'll come and eat me up as soon as it grows dark," thought Mell; and
this idea so terrified her that she began to beat on the door with her
hands, and scream at the top of her voice. No one came. And after a
while she grew so weary that she could scream no longer; so she curled
herself up on the floor of the closet and went to sleep.

When she woke the closet was darker than ever. Mell felt weak and ill
for want of food. Her head ached; her bones ached from lying on the hard
floor; she was feverish and very miserable.

"It's dark; she's going to leave me here all night," sobbed Mell. "Oh!
won't somebody come and let me out?" Now _would_ have been a chance to
play that she was a princess shut up in a dark dungeon! But Mell didn't
feel like playing. She was a real little girl shut up in a closet, and
it wasn't nice at all. There was no "make believe" left in her just
then.

Suddenly a fine scratching sound began in the wall close to her head.
"The mouse, the mouse," thought Mell, and she gave a shriek so loud that
it would have scared away a whole army of mice. The shriek sounded all
over the house. It woke the children in their beds, and rang in the ears
of Mrs. Davis, who was sitting down to supper in the kitchen with
somebody just arrived,--a big, brown, rough-bearded somebody, who smelt
of salt-water; Mell's father, in short, returned from sea.

"What's that?" asked Captain Davis, putting down his cup.

Mrs. Davis was frightened. In the excitement of her husband's sudden
return she had quite forgotten poor Mell in her closet.

"Some of the children," she answered, trying to speak carelessly. "I'll
run up."

Another terrible shriek. Captain Davis seized a candle, and hurried
upstairs after his wife.

He w