don't
want any of your instructions in duty!"

"You ought to put up with a word from a friend, Faith," said I. "You
always come to me with your grievances. And I'll tell you what I'll do.
You used to like these coral branches of mine; and if you'll give those
back to Mr. Gabriel, you shall have the coral."

Well, Faith she hesitated, standing there trying to muster her mind to
the needle, and it ended by her taking the coral, though I don't believe
she returned the pearls,--but we none of us ever saw them afterwards.

We'd been talking in a pretty low tone, because mother was asleep; and
just as she'd finished the other ear, and a little drop of blood stood
up on it like a live ruby, the door opened and Dan and Mr. Gabriel came
in. There never was a prettier picture than Faith at that moment, and so
the young stranger thought, for he stared at her, smiling and at ease,
just as if she'd been hung in a gallery and he'd bought a ticket. So
then he sat down and repeated to Dan and mother what she'd told me, and
he promised to send for the papers to prove it all. But he never did
send for them,--delaying and delaying, till the summer wore away; and
perhaps there were such papers and perhaps there weren't. I've always
thought he didn't want his own friends to know where he was. Dan might
be a rich man to-day, if he chose to look them up; but he'd scorch at a
slow fire before he'd touch a copper of it. Father never believed a word
about it, when we recited it again to him.

"So Faith 'a come into her fortune, has she?" said he. "Pretty child!
She 'a'n't had so much before sence she fell heir to old Miss Devereux's
best chany, her six silver spoons, and her surname."

So the days passed, and the greater part of every one Mr. Gabriel was
dabbling in the water somewhere. There wasn't a brook within ten miles
that he didn't empty of trout, for Dan knew the woods as well as the
shores, and he knew the clear nights when the insects can keep free from
the water so that next day the fish rise hungry to the surface; and so
sometimes in the brightest of May noons they'd bring home a string of
those beauties, speckled with little tongues of flame; and Mr. Gabriel
would have them cooked, and make us all taste them,--for we don't care
much for that sort, down here on the Flats; we should think we were
famished, if we had to eat fish. And then they'd lie in wait all day for
the darting pickerel in the little Stream of Shadows above; and