penny to where she came from? Is my own
dearest little dog to suffer for such a person's whims? Oh, fie! oh,
fie! Well, come here my Scorpion; your mistress won't reject you."

For Flower, in a fit of ungovernable temper, had suddenly dashed the
petted form of Scorpion to the ground.

The poor angry girl now buried herself in the farthest corner of the
railway carriage. From there she could hear Mrs. Cameron muttering about
"somebody's" temper, and hoping that "somebody" would get her deserts.

These remarks, uttered several times, frightened Flower so much that at
last she looked up, and said, in a queer, startled voice:

"You don't think Dr. Maybright is going to die? You can't be so awfully
wicked as to think that."

"Oh, we are wicked, are we, Scorpion?" said Mrs. Cameron, her fat hand
gently stroking down Scorpion's smooth fur from tip to tail. "Never
mind, Scorpion, my own; never mind. When the little demon of temper gets
into somebody she isn't quite accountable, is she?"

Flower wondered if any restraining power would keep her from leaping out
of the window.

But even the weariest journey comes to an end at last, and twenty-four
hours after she had left Sleepy Hollow, Flower, feeling the most
subdued, the most abject, the most brow-beaten young person in
Christendom, returned to it. Toward the end of the journey she felt
impervious to Mrs. Cameron's sly allusions, and Scorpion growled and
snapped at her in vain. Her whole heart was filled with one
over-powering dread. How should she find the Doctor? Was he better? Was
he worse? Or had all things earthly come to an end for him; and had he
reached a place where even the naughtiest girl in all the world could
vex and trouble him no longer?

When the hired fly drew up outside the porch, Flower suddenly remembered
her first arrival--the gay "Welcome" which had waved above her head;
the kind, bright young faces that had come out of the darkness to greet
her; the voice of the head of the house, that voice which she was so
soon to learn to love, uttering the cheeriest and heartiest words of
greeting. Now, although Mrs. Cameron pulled the hall-door bell with no
uncertain sound, no one, for a time at least, answered the summons, and
Flower, seizing her opportunity, sprang out of the fly and rushed into
the house.

The first person she met, the very first, was Polly. Polly was sitting
at the foot of the stairs, all alone. She had seated herself on the
bottom st