med to have grown many years older since the flood came. He
was no taller, and no stronger;--indeed he seemed to-day to be growing
weaker with fatigue; but he was not the timid boy he had always appeared
before. He spoke like a man; and there was the spirit of a man in his
eyes. It was not a singular instance. There have been other cases in
which a timid boy has been made a man of, on a sudden, by having to
protect, from danger or in sorrow, some weaker than himself. Roger felt
something of the truth; and this had as much to do with making him quiet
and tractable to-day as his interest about George, or his liking to live
in a tent with companions, rather than in the open air and alone.

Ailwin was but a short time gone. She came up the bank to Mildred,
swinging her empty milk-pail, and sobbing, as if from the bottom of her
heart. Mildred did not think she had ever seen Ailwin cry so before;
and she could imagine nothing now but that Oliver was lost. She turned
so giddy in a moment that she could not see Ailwin, and so sick that she
could not speak to her.

"So you have heard, Mildred,--you have heard, I see by your being so
white. Oliver says she has been dead ever so many hours. I say, if we
had gone the first thing, instead of staring and poking about yon
tumble-down house, we might have saved her. I shall never milk her
again,--not a drop!--nor any other either, so far as I see; for there is
no saying that we shall ever get away. Here I have not a drop of milk
to give you, my dear, though you are as white as the wall."

"Never mind," gasped Mildred, "if it is only the cow. I thought it had
been Oliver."

"Oliver! Bless your heart! There he is as busy about the house and
things, as if nothing had happened; and just as provoking as you for
caring nothing about the poor cow. There she lies, poor soul! Dead and
cold, half in the water, and half out. She was worth you two put
together, for some things,--I can tell you that."

"Indeed I am very sorry," said Mildred; and as she saw George pulling
about the empty can, she melted into tears, which would come faster and
faster till Oliver again stood by her side. She tried to tell him what
she had been afraid of, and how she thought she should not have cried
but for that;--or, at least, not so much; but she really could not
explain what she felt, her sobs came so thick.

"I do not know exactly what you mean, dear," said Oliver; "but I
understand that y