rgot their duty to their
own offspring; but if the Crow children resented this it was not
exhibited in the expressions of love and admiration for their
foster-sister. Edna Crow, the eldest of the girls--Anderson called her
"Edner"--was Rosalie's most devoted slave, while Roscoe, the
twelve-year-old boy, who comprised the rear rank of Anderson's little
army, knelt so constantly at her shrine that he fell far behind in his
studies, and stuck to the third reader for two years.

Anderson had not been idle in all these years. He was fast approaching
his seventieth anniversary, but he was not a day older in spirit than
when we first made his acquaintance. True, his hair was thinner and
whiter, and his whiskers straggled a little more carelessly than in
other days, but he was as young and active as a youth of twenty. Hard
times did not worry him, nor did domestic troubles. Mrs. Crow often
admitted that she tried her best to worry him, but it was like "pouring
water on a duck's back." He went blissfully on his way, earning
encomiums for himself and honours for Tinkletown. There was no grave
crime committed in the land that he did not have a well-defined scheme
for apprehending the perpetrators. His "deductions" at Lamson's store
never failed to draw out and hold large audiences, and no one disputed
his theories in public. The fact that he was responsible for the arrest
of various hog, horse, and chicken thieves from time to time, and for
the continuous seizure of the two town drunkards, Tom Folly and Alf
Reesling, kept his reputation untarnished, despite the numerous errors
of commission and omission that crept in between.

That Rosalie's mysterious friends--or enemies, it might have been--kept
close and accurate watch over her was manifested from time to time.
Once, when Anderson was very ill with typhoid fever, the package of
bills was accompanied by an unsigned, typewritten letter. The writer
announced that Mr. Crow's state of health was causing some anxiety on
Rosalie's account--the child was then six years old--and it was hoped
that nothing serious would result. Another time the strange writer, in a
letter from Paris, instructed Mr. Crow to send Rosalie to a certain
boarding school and to see that she had French, German, and music from
competent instructors. Again, just before the girl went to New York for
her two years' stay in Miss Brown's school, there came a package
containing $2500 for her own personal use. Rosalie o