burst into a bright flame.
Then he turned to the bed. "You rascal!" he whispered, looking at Fritz,
who raised his head quickly with a threatening look in his wicked eyes.

Lloyd lay with one hand stretched out, holding the dog's protecting paw.
The other held something against her tear-stained cheek.

"What under the sun!" he thought, as he drew it gently from her fingers.
The little glove lay across his hand, slim and aristocratic-looking. He
knew instinctively whose it was. "Poor little thing's been crying," he
thought. "She wants Elizabeth. And so do I! And so do I!" his heart
cried out with bitter longing. "It's never been like home since she
left."

He laid the glove back on her pillow, and went to his room.

"If Jack Sherman should die," he said to himself many times that night,
"then she would come home again. Oh, little daughter, little daughter!
why did you ever leave me?"

CHAPTER VIII.

The first thing that greeted the Little Colonel's eyes when she opened
them next morning was her mother's old doll. Maria had laid it on the
pillow beside her.

It was beautifully dressed, although in a queer, old-fashioned style
that seemed very strange to the child.

She took it up with careful fingers, remembering its great age. Maria
had warned her not to waken her grandfather, so she admired it in
whispers.

"Jus' think, Fritz," she exclaimed, "this doll has seen my Gran'mothah
Amanthis, an' it's named for her. My mothah wasn't any bigger'n me when
she played with it. I think it is the loveliest doll I evah saw in my
whole life."

Fritz gave a jealous bark.

"Sh!" commanded his little mistress. "Didn't you heah M'ria say, 'Fo' de
Lawd's sake don't wake up ole Marse?' Why don't you mind?"

The Colonel was not in the best of humours after such a wakeful night,
but the sight of her happiness made him smile in spite of himself, when
she danced into his room with the doll.

She had eaten an early breakfast and gone back up-stairs to examine the
other toys that were spread out in her room.

The door between the two rooms was ajar. All the time he was dressing
and taking his coffee he could hear her talking to some one. He supposed
it was Maria. But as he glanced over his mail he heard the Little
Colonel saying, "May Lilly, do you know about Billy Goat Gruff? Do you
want me to tell you that story?"

He leaned forward until he could look through the narrow opening of the
door. Two heads were all he co