must help me find a way."

"Wal,"--slowly, as Uncle Jem thought with wrinkled brows--"Wal, I guess
about the fust thing to do is to go an' ask that hotel child's ma how
much it cost her to go acrost. Then we'll have that to go by. We
ain't got nothin' to go by now, deary."

"No," Judith answered, dreamily. She was looking out of the little,
many-paned window across the distant water. It looked like a very
great way.

"I suppose it's--pretty far," she murmured wistfully.

"Oh, consid'able--consid'able," the old man agreed vaguely. "But ye
won't mind that. It won't be fur _comin' home!_"

The faith of the old child and the young was good that this beautiful
miracle could be brought about. Judith went home with elastic step
and lifted, trustful face.

Jem Three, scuffing barefoot through the sandy soil, met this radiant
dream-maiden with the exalted mien. Jem Three was not of exalted
mien, and he never dreamed. He was brown up to the red rim of his
hair, and big and homely. But the freckles in line across the
brownness of his face spelled h-o-n-e-s-t-y. At least, they always
had before to Judith Lynn and all the world. To-night Judith was to
read them differently.

"Hullo, Jude!"

It is hard to come out of a beautiful dream, plump upon a prosaic boy
who says, "Hullo!" It is apt to jolt one. It jolted Judith.

"Oh! Oh, it's you!" she came out enough to say, and then went back.
The prosaic boy regarded her in puzzled wonder. Head up, shoulders
back, eyes looking right through you--what kind of a Jude was this!
Was she walking in her sleep?

"Hullo, I _said_," he repeated. "If you've left your manners to
home--"

"Oh!--oh, hello, Jem! I guess I was busy thinking."

"Looked like it. Bad habit to get into. Better look out! I never
indulge, myself. Well, how's luck?"

"Luck? Oh, you mean lobsters?" Judith had not been busy thinking of
lobsters, but now her grievance came back to her. "Oh, Jem! I never
got but three! All my pains for three lobsters! And two of those just
long enough not to be short. It means--I suppose it means a bad
season, doesn't it?"

Jem Three pursed his lips into a whistle. Afterward, when Judith's
evil thoughts had invaded her mind, she remembered that Jem Three had
avoided looking at her; yes, certainly he had shifted his bare toes
about in the sand. And when he spoke, his voice had certainly sounded
muttery.

"Guess somethin' ails your traps," he had said. "Warn't nothin' the
matte