with real feeling, that it was hard to bid
farewell for so long a time to his old playmate, and that he did not
know how he could endure the separation. As the last words were spoken
it was Rast who had tear-dimmed eyes; it was Rast's voice that faltered.
Anne was calm, and her calmness annoyed him. He would have liked a more
demonstrative sorrow. But as he went down the long path on his way to
the pier where the steamboat was waiting, the first whistle having
already sounded, he forgot everything save his affection for her and the
loneliness in store for him after her departure. While she was on their
island she seemed near, but New York was another world.

Down in the shadow of the great gate there was an ancient little
cherry-tree, low and gnarled, which thrust one crooked arm across the
path above the heads of the passers-by. As Rast approached he saw in the
dusky twilight a small figure perched upon this bough, and recognized
Tita.

"Is that you, child?" he said, pausing and looking up. She answered by
dropping into his arms like a kitten, and clinging to him mutely, with
her face hidden on his shoulder.

"What an affectionate little creature she is, after all!" he thought,
stroking her dark hair. Then, after saying good-by, and giving her a
kiss, he disengaged himself without much ceremony, and telling her to be
a good girl and mind Miss Lois during the winter, he hurried down to the
pier, the second whistle summoning all loiterers on board with shrill
harshness. Tita, left alone, looked at her arms, reddened by the force
with which she had resisted his efforts to unclasp them. They had been
pressed so closely against the rough woollen cloth of his coat that the
brown flesh showed the mark of the diagonal pattern.

[Illustration: "SHE SAT THERE HIGH IN THE AIR WHILE THE STEAMER BACKED
OUT FROM THE PIERS."]

"It is a hurt," she said, passionately--"it is a hurt." Her eyes
flashed, and she shook her small fist at the retreating figure. Then, as
the whistle sounded a third time, she climbed quickly to the top of the
great gates, and sat there high in the air while the steamer backed
out from the piers, turned round, and started westward through the
Straits, nothing now save a moving line of lights, the short Northern
twilight having faded into night.

When the long sad day of parting was at last over, and everything done
that her hands could find to do in that amount of time, Anne, in her own
room alone, let