d all that summer day it was the same.

"What's amiss with my dear maid?" anxiously asked Mrs. Barbara, when
bed-time came.

Then it all came out.

"I've lost my pearl-rimmed locket!" sobbed Jinty. "Ah Lon asked to look
at it this morning the first thing; she always does, you know. And I
took it off, and then Mike pecked my legs and Ah Lon's so hard that we
both ran away screaming, and I must have dropped the locket--and it's
gone!"

"Gone! That can't be! Unless--unless----" Mrs. Barbara hesitated, and
Jinty knew they were thinking the same thing. "Have you told Ah Lon,
deary?"

"I did this afternoon, and she cried. I never saw her cry before!"

"Ah, jes' so! You can't trust they foreigners. But I'll sift this
business, I shall!" vigorously said Mrs. Barbara.

But for days the disappearance of the locket was a mystery. In Mrs.
Barbara's mind there was no doubt that Ah Lon had taken the coveted
picture and concealed it in safe hiding. Jinty almost thought so too,
and a gloom crept over Old Studley. "I dursn't tell the master, he's
that wrapped up in the wicked little yellow-faced creature. I'll step
over to the parson and tell he," Mrs. Barbara decided, and arraying
herself in her Sunday best, she sallied forth to the vicarage.

As she crossed the little common shouts and laughter and angry chatter
fell on her ear.

A group of schoolboys, the parson's four little sons, were closing in
round a dark object.

"Why, if that isn't our Mike! I never knew the bird to go outside of Old
Studley before. What----"

"Oh, Mrs. Barbara, do come along here!" Reggie, the eldest of the four,
turned his head and beckoned her.

[Sidenote: Mike's Mishap]

"Here's a nice go! We've run your Mike in, and see his fury, do! Our
Tommy was looking for birds' eggs in the Old Studley hedge, and he saw a
shine of gold and pulled out this! And Mike chased him, madly pecking
his legs, out here to the common. And now he's fit to fly at me because
I've got his stolen goods. Look, do!"

Reggie doubled up with yells of laughter, and Mike, in a storm of fury,
shrieked himself hoarse.

But Mrs. Barbara stood dumb.

In a flash the truth had come to her.

Mike, not poor Ah Lon, was the thief. She tingled all over with
remorseful shame as she crept home with the locket in her hand.

"Oh, and we thought you had stolen it, Ah Lon dear!" Jinty confessed,
with wild weeping; but Ah Lon was placidly smoothing the precious little
picture. It w