elieve that she was drowned."

"I can understand," said Miss Chester, "how the doubt must have made
it so hard to bear. And yet you are so cheerful and so ready to make
other people's burdens light. Good Father Abram!"

"Good Miss Rose!" mimicked the miller, smiling. "Who thinks of others
more than you do?"

A whimsical mood seemed to strike Miss Chester.

"Oh, Father Abram," she cried, "wouldn't it be grand if I should prove
to be your daughter? Wouldn't it be romantic? And wouldn't you like to
have me for a daughter?"

"Indeed, I would," said the miller, heartily. "If Aglaia had lived I
could wish for nothing better than for her to have grown up to be just
such a little woman as you are. Maybe you are Aglaia," he continued,
falling in with her playful mood; "can't you remember when we lived at
the mill?"

Miss Chester fell swiftly into serious meditation. Her large eyes were
fixed vaguely upon something in the distance. Father Abram was amused
at her quick return to seriousness. She sat thus for a long time
before she spoke.

"No," she said at length, with a long sigh, "I can't remember anything
at all about a mill. I don't think that I ever saw a flour mill in my
life until I saw your funny little church. And if I were your little
girl I would remember it, wouldn't I? I'm so sorry, Father Abram."

"So am I," said Father Abram, humouring her. "But if you cannot
remember that you are my little girl, Miss Rose, surely you can
recollect being some one else's. You remember your own parents, of
course."

"Oh, yes; I remember them very well--especially my father. He wasn't a
bit like you, Father Abram. Oh, I was only making believe: Come, now,
you've rested long enough. You promised to show me the pool where you
can see the trout playing, this afternoon. I never saw a trout."

Late one afternoon Father Abram set out for the old mill alone. He
often went to sit and think of the old days when he lived in the
cottage across the road. Time had smoothed away the sharpness of his
grief until he no longer found the memory of those times painful. But
whenever Abram Strong sat in the melancholy September afternoons on
the spot where "Dums" used to run in every day with her yellow curls
flying, the smile that Lakelands always saw upon his face was not
there.

The miller made his way slowly up the winding, steep road. The trees
crowded so close to the edge of it that he walked in their shade, with
his hat in his hand. S