CHAPTER XII.

OUR tutor was gone, but a new delight came. Age loses without regaining; youth quickly supplies its losses. Little Ada came home just as the exciting interest caused by poor Grace Fleetwood had subsided, and just as the void left in our daily life by the departure of the curate required to be filled up.

Darling little thing! what a substitute for a wise and reverend teacher !

When I first saw my child she had just been put into the arms of the strange woman who was to take charge of her, while her weeping foster mother was avowedly trying to escape unseen, but really wanting to prove the fondness of one

for the other. The result was a terrible scene of crying and struggling. The moment I approached the screaming child she stretched her little rosyarms, clasped them round my neck, and hiding there the little face convulsed with crying, stifled her sobs upon it. Our father was disturbed by the uproar; a crying child gave him the idea of pain-he could not bear it. Our mother, with a bewildered countenance, and to the fostermother's joy, began to propose that the child she had had for eighteen months already should go away with her again for the next six.

"She is mine!" I cried, "she shall stay with me." And I ran away with her in my arms into the wood.

Before I had carried her long she was fast asleep; a sense of ill-usage seemed to overcome her, and she slept in my arms, insensible now to the tyranny that had been exercised over her affections. A new love was kindled in my heart, yet excessive as it was, it could not make me unconscious of the load in my arms, and so I carried my child off the path into the centre of the trees, and laid her down to

sleep there. One peculiarity of our wood was, that it was formed on a slope, and in one part a very high path overlooked a very low one in the intervening space the ground beneath the thick growing trees was profusely covered by wild blue-bells, which were now in full blossom. Little Ada wore a cloak and cape of the same colour and selecting a nice soft spot I laid down my fairy gift in quite a fairy bed, and went on my walk.

Before I had gone very far, Wilton met me and invited me to go to see an immense white owl which he had shot, and which I had certainly seen dead ten days before: but now it was sitting up alive on the bed of dead leaves where it had been thrown.

I went with him instantly, and with great wonder saw the singular creature, quite erect, winking and rolling its great yellow eyes. How it had come to life, how it had managed to stay alive there by itself, while it could neither fly nor walk, being utterly disabled from procuring itself food, was quite mysterious. But now to bring it home. and feed it, was the first thing thought of. This was not easily done, and Wilton proposed putting

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a final end to the creature. He had always a tendency to cruelty: he seemed to think he showed his manliness by wishing to kill the owl. I secured it, hastened home with the wounded prisoner, put it in a dark closet as the most congenial place for it, and got it food.

Just as my cares were ended the dinner bell rang: we were always obliged to hasten to table by our father, though allowed to hasten from it whenever we pleased. When dinner was nearly over, he remarked to our mother that he hoped she would never let him hear the child cry again, and she, looking at me, said :

"Your child has been very quiet, I suppose she is reconciled to her new place."

A terrible pang seized me.

My child!

where was it? left out in the wood among the

blue-bells! forgotten for the owl!

Without a word I rose and ran out of the

room, our father calling after me

"Don't bring it here if it will cry."

Along the high walk I ran with the swiftness of fear; but having gone a considerable distance from the house I stopped, recollecting that

I was running at random. place where I had left the

Where was the child? I darted

down the bank, dashed through the bluebells-stopped, looked around all was still, and not a break or opening presented itself to my eager, hurried, and at last terrified gaze. I looked in vain-so I stood and listened. The cry so frightful to our father would have been hailed with rapture by me. Not a sound-but that all-pervading one from which the summer air is never free. I raised my clasped hands, I darted through brushwood and brambles, franticly calling out Ada! Ada! and forgetting the little creature could not answer me.

There was a sound, a spring down the bank behind me, and Walter, catching me in his arms, exclaimed-" Maida! for pity's sake what is the matter?"

The boy looked as frightened as myself.

"I have lost the child," I cried, breaking away.

"The child-what child ?"

My child-Ada-O! find her! find her!" Walter told me afterwards that a terrible fear