e people cry in our family. I heard Mamma crying
last night, after she thought I was asleep. And I know she was
crying about Uncle Charlie. She cried when they took him away, you
know, and now she cries when he's coming home again. She cried
awf'ly when they took him away."

"Oh, she did, eh?"

"Yes. He used to live with Mamma and me at our house in
Middleford. He's awful nice, Uncle Charlie is, and Petunia and I
were very fond of him. And then they took him away and we haven't
seen him since."

"He's been sick, maybe."

"Perhaps so. But he must be well again now cause he's coming home;
Mamma said so."

"Um-hm. Well, I guess that was it. Probably he had to go to the--
the hospital or somewhere and your ma has been worried about him.
He's had an operation maybe. Lots of folks have operations
nowadays; it's got to be the fashion, seems so."

The child reflected.

"Do they have to have policemen come to take you to the hospital?"
she asked.

"Eh? . . . Policemen?"

"Yes. 'Twas two big policemen took Uncle Charlie away the first
time. We were having supper, Mamma and he and I, and Nora went to
the door when the bell rang and the big policemen came and Uncle
Charlie went away with them. And Mamma cried so. And she wouldn't
tell me a bit about. . . . Oh! OH! I've told about the policemen!
Mamma said I mustn't ever, EVER tell anybody that. And--and I did!
I DID!"

Aghast at her own depravity, she began to sob. Jed tried to
comfort her and succeeded, after a fashion, at least she stopped
crying, although she was silent most of the way home. And Jed
himself was silent also. He shared her feeling of guilt. He felt
that he had been told something which neither he nor any outsider
should have heard, and his sensitive spirit found little
consolation in the fact that the hearing of it had come through no
fault of his. Besides, he was not so sure that he had been
faultless. He had permitted the child's disclosures to go on when,
perhaps, he should have stopped them. By the time the "Araminta's"
nose slid up on the sloping beach at the foot of the bluff before
the Winslow place she held two conscience-stricken culprits instead
of one.

And if Ruth Armstrong slept but little that night, as her daughter
said had been the case the night before, she was not the only
wakeful person in that part of Orham. She would have been
surprised if she had known that her eccentric neighbor and landlord
was