t is the place we skipped. I felt
sure you wouldn't know anything at all about it, Auntie Charlotte, but
Stranger said you know just as much as Minister, which is another thing
I am going to ask him about. Come on, Stranger." And with her usual
lightning rapidity, Charlotte began to marshal her forces out of the
room.

"Please don't!" were the words I sent faltering after her determination
to question Mr. Goodloe about his and my relative erudition, but I felt
that they made no impression.

"Sonny thinks about you just as Charlotte does about Mr. Goodloe, and
he'll say so to everybody," said Martha, with a sad smile after the door
had closed with vigor enough to startle the household.

"He's a fine child," said Mother Spurlock, with a great tenderness in
her smile at Martha. "Did you ask Mrs. Todd if that big hulk of a Jones
boy could get into the coat that Dabney got me from the judge's closet?"
she said, continuing the subject in hand, which lasted her for another
hour. When she went she took Martha with her to carry half the bundles
down to the Little House, the roof of which was the first thing to be
patched in stricken Goodloets.

That night I felt the hands of the Stray on my face in the darkness and
his soft cheek cuddle to mine.

"_You_ say they _is_ fairies, Lady," he coaxed.

"There are fairies and there always will be for you," I answered, as I
drew him close and kissed the fragrant mouth so near mine. "Go back to
mother now," I added, as I felt the sleepy huddle of his little shoulder
against mine. He went and I promised myself that no matter how lonely I
was to be I would always send him back to his mother and not ever forget
that her claim was first. Tears were in my eyes as I turned my face into
the pillow, but suddenly the refrain of the song I had once heard in the
night, "Abide with me, fast falls the eventide," sung itself in my heart
until I again fell to sleep.

The dedication day for Goodloe Chapel arrived upon Goodloets just one
month from the day upon which the beast of storm had ravaged it, and as
that fateful morning dawned with an extraordinary grandeur, so that
Sunday in mid-October came up from behind Paradise Ridge with unusual
beauty, only with the difference of calmness instead of splendor and
peace instead of tumult. The sun was warm and benignant, with not a
cloud in the deep blue sky to obscure its blessing. A gentle breeze blew
in from the fields and meadows laden with rich ha