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didn't get it; but I would like to keep it too.”

"Well, look here, John Davies. You may be too small to understand just now, but I'll tell you all the same. You put it wrong just now. I'm not the man that ought to own this place. My father made his own money, and had an absolute right to leave it where he liked. I can't explain it better than that; but he was in the right, and I was in the wrong, whatever people may say-will you remember that?"

Little John sympathetically recognised the hidden presence of strong feeling. He nodded respectfully without a word; but when his new friend seemed to be about to turn away and leave him, he spoke in the plaintive babyish voice with which he was wont to wheedle his "Nain."

"Shall I see what is in the little small house there?" he begged, and after a moment's hesitation George Warcop consented.

"It's my little house, as it happens," he explained, "with my little boat in it, and I wasn't just lurking round trespassing. I came to see if the canoe was all right, and as I said it was, before disposing of it to a friend."

He felt a curious satisfaction in his own common-sense friendliness towards this little interloper. As for the little interloper, he had from the beginning taken a deep interest in "the man that was turned out," and it was rapidly mounting to the height of hero - worship. He

spent a beatific morning, and came back to his father at luncheon-time full of tales of the "sport" he had had in a boat with Mr George Warcop.

John Davies listened with eager attention, and even tried to extract a fifth or sixth recital of the story after luncheon for the sake of detaining the only companion who could speak an intelligible word to him in this unutterably dreary world of idleness and illness and solitude.

But the magic of the sun on the water called to little John, and he presently slipped away. He was nowhere to be found when Mr Burleigh returned in the afternoon to inquire whether an answer had yet been received to the letter which had not yet been sent.

John Davies, after making an embarrassed attempt to answer the polite questions of the land-agent, got up and raised a forefinger which said "stay there."

"Go for little boy," he added less intelligibly in English, and left the room hurriedly.

He knew where to go. Every inch of the way to the lake had been graphically described to him, and he made straight for the little path beyond the flower-gardens. His heavy dragging steps followed where little John's buoyant feet had passed before him, and in a few minutes he found himself at the edge of the water.

By this time the shadows were on the nearer side, and the cobbler's elderly eyes could barely make out the distant boat-house for the glare that

lay before it. But he guessed that little John would be there, and in despair of making his voice carry across the lake, he hurried round as fast as the brushwood would allow.

He was within twenty yards of the boat-house when there was a sudden cleavage of the brilliance in front of it. The canoe, with little John alone inside it, flew out of its small den into the open water. It was propelled evidently by a violent push, and the light skiff with its tiny occupant rocked dangerously as it ran.

John Davies uttered a shout of dismayed warning, and little John jumped to his feet. The canoe lurched over. There was

a splash and a commotion, and then nothing to be seen but the round bottom of the little boat floating upon the dazzling sheet of water.

The unhappy father opened his mouth to scream, but only the sound of a harsh breath escaped him. The rush forward that he tried to make resulted in one feeble movement of his trembling legs. He did not hear the sound of steps behind him, and did not turn his head when George Warcop seized him by the arm asking a sharp question. He only pointed at the canoe with a palsied hand, and kept his eyes fixed upon it with agonised intensity.

George pulled off his coat and his boots with unhurried precision, and plunged straight into the water with the same well-considered speed. He had to swim from the first, and he was slow at swimming as at

everything else. He returned even more slowly than he went - but he brought little John with him.

"Dead!" said John Davies, in a broken whisper.

George did not understand him, and paid no attention. He was fully occupied with his scientifically energetic efforts to restore life to the inert little body in sodden clothes which he had dislodged from under the canoe - too late, as he began to fear.

It seemed long before his efforts were rewarded, but at last he looked round triumphantly at John Davies, to find him huddled upon the ground, with his head hanging forward upon his breast, and his apathetic eyes still trying to watch though they apparently saw nothing.

"Buck up!" growled George kindly. "He's all right-look at him!"

The cheeriness of his tone seemed to galvanise the old man. He jerked up his head and looked, and uttered a loud tremulous sigh when he saw that little John certainly lived.

"I'll carry him to the house," said the big Englishman briskly. "Blest if I don't think I shall have to carry 'em both!" he murmured to himself.

But John Davies followed him, even ran after him with staggering steps, and praised God aloud as he ran, with tears streaming down his face.

He arrived at the front door just as George was trying to make his escape from Morton, who was as nearly hanging on to one of his wet sleeves as

owner induced him to

dignity and propriety would new
allow. The cobbler laid hold
of the other sleeve.

"Ol-right?" stammered the old man.

"Yes, yes! Right as a trivet -in bed by now," stuttered the young one. He held himself like a poker, and from the edge of his ruined collar to the roots of his wet hair he was crimson with dread of the possible thanks of "this mad old party with the queer hair," as he put it to himself.

His fears were only too wellfounded. John Davies seized his limp reluctant hand and shook it violently from side to side, while he repeated with a fervour altogether unsuited to the moderate word, "Tanciw, tanciw, tanciw!"

"Not at all, I assure you," gabbled George, becoming redder and redder in the face, and frowning so fiercely at Morton that the discreet servant retired into the house. "All my fault, you see. Like a fool, I forgot the key-left it in the lock of the boat-house. Lucky I came back for it-that's all. And now if you don't mind, I'll just be off-you see I'm in such a beastly mess"

He withdrew his hand forcibly, only to find himself fast by the sleeve again.

"Mistar Tsiorts War-cop?" queried the cobbler.

"Yes," said the young Englishman shortly.

To his despair he found that the old Welshman had suddenly become resolved to tow him back into the house. Nothing but his dread of appearing to harbour a grudge against its

yield.

"What's this heathen old hatter want now?" he muttered desperately, when he found himself being drawn into a small side-lobby where a few hats and coats hung upon a row of hooks.

There seemed to be some method in the cobbler's madness. He went straight up to a certain waterproof shootingcoat, well known to George, and then, his black eyes shinning with excitement beneath their swollen lids, and eagerly searching the young man's large blue orbs for a sympathetic gleam, he fumbled in one of his own pockets and produced a paper. This he stuffed into the pocket of the waterproof coat, which he proceeded to put on.

George began to understand that something was being explained to him by pantomime, and turned pale with pectation.

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"Lass' night, s'e rain," said the cobbler. He next appeared to discover the paper with surprise and examine it.

"For 'ew!" he said at last, presenting it stolidly. Then he watched with deep satisfaction for the effect of his action.

George read the paper through, and when he looked up his face was pink again with a flush which extended to the whites of his eyes. This time it was he who extended his hand.

"Thanks," he said gruffly, while the cobbler tried to shake his hand from side to

side, and he tried to shake the cobbler's up and down, "Thanks," he said again. "Awfully sporting of you to hand it over to me first. Don't know what the lawyers 'll make of it, but we'll ask them, and let the best man wineh?"

"All for 'ew," said John Davies, waving his work-worn hand solemnly in the direction of the hanging garments. "Mistar War-cop wish it."

"Oh! I say!" remonstrated George. "We might make some arrangement: in the meantime, you stick to this, will you?"

But John Davies rejected the paper with horror. His desire to be rid of it was what had made him drag the unwilling heir back into the house, and George was obliged to go off with it.

The old man stood upon the steps looking after him. It was little he had understood of the words addressed to him, but he had contrived somehow to understand the man.

"Not the money made his eyes grow red," he said, half aloud. "Thinking his father was caring about him in the end, he was." His eyes travelled up to the level of the bedroom window and grew wonderfully soft.

"They don't know how much we care for them," he said, almost as if he spoke to some one beside him; and then he hurried into the house to sit by little John's bedside, and watch his sleeping face as if he never meant to lose sight of it again.

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His neighbours were deeply interested in him for the moment to allow him to work alone. Every old shoe in the parish was routed out to provide an excuse for a visit to Pen-y-Bonc. The chief gossip of the place was even accused by a jester of having collected a pair for this purpose off some fields which had been economically manured with refuse. It was little enough she had been able to extract out of the silent little man beyond satirical smiles and quick upward glances when she told the story too well herself.

But towards evening "Mrs" Davies, as she was called that day for the first time by a pioneer, came to the workshop, and two men, a young joiner and a farmer's man, who happened to be lounging against the cobwebs, had better luck. She was willing enough to expatiate upon what had been lost, at least, and her son could not refrain from comments and corrections.

"Every room there as big as a house!" she assured them.

"Yes, there was a splendid place there," agreed the cobbler, sparing from his work a glance round which was anything but regretful.

"And John was to have tion that all was for the best

them all, and ten servants, the half of them fine men! But it's better as it is, too. The strange food was working upon him, so that he was clean unable to get his health. He is gone as thin as the leg of a fork, and he's not nearly well yet. And he was thinking that little John's head would never go grey, with boats and guns and horses to kill him on every side. And the two are gone like fools about that young man that has it now. To hear them, you would think it was some angel that took thirty thousand of pounds from them!"

"What would be thirty thousands to me, and little John in his grave?" put in the cobbler, with a vibrating note in his voice.

"You paid him well for that!" retorted the old lady. "And he gave us enough to be comfortable, and put by to give the best school to little John, and college afterwards," continued John Davies. The first touch of complacence showed in his manner as he said this.

"On the paper that wasthe paper that was worth thirty thousands to him. And you gave it to him without asking a penny!" cried his mother scornfully. "If you had put that in the fire without looking at it" (she winked at the company) "there would be enough for you to send the parish to school - and college afterwards!"

The censorious old lady saw no reason why her real convic

should deprive her of the pleasure of condemning her son's quixotic behaviour.

"There was no name after those words," persisted John Davies, turning to the joiner as from a female to a reasoning creature, "and the lawyer said it wouldn't do. But Mr War-cop, he said it was the same to him as if there was a

name after it. William Henry, my cousin, was telling me afterwards."

"Only fair play, that was," said the farmer's man.

"Well, yes, to be sure; but he was kind too. He took on that he was losing nothing giving me that-only to sell some old carpets and curtains that he showed me. They think that we will believe everything, look you! But I saw them - some old ragged refuse they were."

"What price was he putting on them?" cunningly inquired the joiner. The whole parish was agog to know the exact sum which the cobbler's good fortune had brought him.

But John Davies, though the parish folk might scorn him a little for not being "like every one else,” was superior to them in the matter of keeping counsel.

"There's what I was telling you," he said, with a show of innocent candour. "Just exactly the same as what he was giving to me, he said somebody had been offering to his father before he died; and his father was just on selling them, and said on the paper that I was to have the money. But no

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