he bread or the
quality of the butter, or even with the milkless tea--I had the poor
man's sauce to flavour them.

When she heard my story, the woman overwhelmed me with pity and regrets
that I had not reached her house overnight and slept there. But I did
not regret it. I would not have given up my "night on the road" now it
was over for worlds.

She was grateful for the sixpence I gave her--having learnt wisdom, I
reserved the threepenny bit--and I went on.

The air was delicious, with a spring and exhilaration in it which
belongs to the early morning hours. The sunlight played hide-and-seek in
the woods. Patches of purple heath alternated with lilac scabious and
pale hare-bells. The brake ferns were yellow-tipped here and there--a
forewarning of autumn--and in one little nook I found a bed of luscious
wild strawberries. My heart danced with my feet, and I wondered if the
tramps ever felt as I did, in the summer mornings, after sleeping out
under a hedge.

I reached home by nine o'clock, and then there was a hubbub, and a
calling out of, "Here's Muriel!" "Why, Muriel, where have you sprung
from?" "What happened last night? We were so frightened, but they told
us at the station that it was an awful crowd at Paddington, and you must
have missed the train, and of course we thought you would go back to
Miss Black's, but you ought to have wired."

It was ever so long before I could make them believe that I had been out
all night, and slept in a hayrick; and then mother was almost angry with
me, and father told me if ever I found myself in such a predicament
again I was to go to a respectable hotel and persuade them to take me
in. But he said he would take very good care that no child of his should
ever be in such a predicament again. But I could not be sorry, the
beginning and the end were so beautiful.

THE MISSING LETTER.

BY JENNIE CHAPPELL.

The Briars was a very old-fashioned house, standing in its own grounds,
about ten miles from Smokeytown. It was much dilapidated, for Miss Clare
the owner and occupier, had not the necessary means for repairing it,
and as she had lived there from her birth--a period of nearly sixty
years--did not like to have the old place pulled down. Not more than
half the rooms were habitable, and in one of them---the former
dining-room--there sat, one January afternoon, Miss Clare, with her
young nephew and niece. They were having tea, and the firelight danced
cosily on the w