sob. That smile burnt into him like a coal of fire.

'Now for the beef-tea,' said Miriam, crying.

'Beef-tea?' the boy repeated after her, mildly questioning.

'Yes, my poppet,' she answered; and then aside, 'Father, he can hear i'
his left ear. Did ye notice it?'

'It's a miracle--a miracle of God!' said Eli.

In a few hours Tommy was as well as ever--indeed, better; not only was
his hearing fully restored, but he had ceased to stammer, and the thin,
almost imperceptible cloud upon his intellect was dissipated. The doctor
expressed but little surprise at these phenomena, and, in fact, stated
that similar things had occurred often before, and were duly written
down in the books of medicine. But Eli Machin's firm, instinctive faith
that Providence had intervened will never be shaken.

Miriam and Tommy now live in the villa-cottage with the old people.

* * * * *

THE IDIOT

William Froyle, ostler at the Queen's Arms at Moorthorne, took the
letter, and, with a curt nod which stifled the loquacity of the village
postman, went at once from the yard into the coach-house. He had
recognised the hand-writing on the envelope, and the recognition of it
gave form and quick life to all the vague suspicions that had troubled
him some months before, and again during the last few days. He felt
suddenly the near approach of a frightful calamity which had long been
stealing towards him.

A wire-sheathed lantern, set on a rough oaken table, cast a wavering
light round the coach-house, and dimly showed the inner stable. Within
the latter could just be distinguished the mottled-gray flanks of a fat
cob which dragged its chain occasionally, making the large slow
movements of a horse comfortably lodged in its stall. The pleasant odour
of animals and hay filled the wide spaces of the shed, and through the
half-open door came a fresh thin mist rising from the rain-soaked yard
in the November evening.

Froyle sat down on the oaken table, his legs dangling, and looked again
at the envelope before opening it. He was a man about thirty years of
age, with a serious and thoughtful, rather heavy countenance. He had a
long light moustache, and his skin was a fresh, rosy salmon colour; his
straw-tinted hair was cut very short, except over the forehead, where it
grew full and bushy. Dressed in his rough stable corduroys, his forearms
bare and white, he had all the appearance of the sturdy Englishman, t