wn at her over the edge, her heart stopped beating. How wildly she
called for him to wait for her to come to him! She promised him all
the dearest of her treasures if he would wait until "sister" got
there.

Now, as she sat clasping her knees, her little body grew all trembling
and weak again as she lived over the terrible moment when she had
reached him just in time to drag him back from the edge, and to cuddle
and caress him, until he lifted up his voice and wept, not because he
was in the least troubled or hurt, but because it seemed to be the
right thing to do.

Then she gave him the pretty round comb that held back her hair, and
he promptly straightened it and broke it; and when she reluctantly
brought him back to dinner--how she had succeeded in getting him down
from the loft would make a chapter of diplomacy--her mother reproved
her for allowing him to take it, and lapped the two pieces and wound
them about with thread, and told her she must wear the broken comb
after this. She was glad--glad it was broken--and she had treasured it
so--and glad that her mother had scolded her; she wished she had
scolded harder instead of speaking words of praise that cut her to the
heart. Oh, oh, oh! If he had fallen over, he would be dead now, and
she would have killed him! Thus she tortured herself, and repented
very hard.

The other sin she had that day committed she felt to be a double sin,
because she knew all the time it was wrong and did it deliberately.
When she went out with the corn meal to feed the little chicks and
fetch in the new-laid eggs, she carried, concealed under her skirt, a
small, squat book of Robert Burns' poems. These poems she loved; not
that she understood them, but that the rhythm pleased her, and the odd
words and half-comprehended phrases stirred her imagination.

So, after feeding the chicks and gathering the eggs, she did not
return to the house, but climbed instead up into the top of the
silver-leaf poplar behind the barn, and sat there long, swaying with
the swaying tree top and reading the lines that most fascinated her
and stirred her soul, until she forgot she must help Martha with the
breakfast dishes--forgot she must carry milk to the neighbor's--forgot
she must mind the baby and peel the potatoes for dinner. It was so
delightful to sway and swing and chant the rythmic lines over and over
that almost she forgot she was being bad, and Martha had done the
things she ought to have done, an