CHAPTER XXIV.

It is true he surprised her in disagreeable ways sometimes. If he saw a pool of deep mud by the road-side he would wallow through it, sadly soiling Minnie's fine cloak of humming-bird feathers. She knew he was partial to mud, and would not have blamed him so much had this excursion been all; but, instead of going back to the grass, where she might wipe herself clean, he would mount some slanting log that rose out of the water, and stand there sunning himself for hours.

One day, a gentleman, who was driving past in a chaise, saw Minnie and the turtle perched thus on a log, and stopped to examine the curious object.

Turtle drew his head inside of his shell at once, and left poor Minnie to her fate.

Now it happened that the traveller was a great naturalist, and especially fond of collecting turtles. He had hundreds of them, snapping at each other, and scrambling over each others' backs, in his yard at home.

Still he was always on the watch for a new specimen; and here was a famous one, he thought. Springing from his chaise, the gentleman ran to the other side of the brook, and was walking cautiously toward them, when turtle thought it time to look out for his own safety. So, dropping from the log, he disappeared in the thick, muddy bottom of the brook.

The naturalist went back, disappointed, to his chaise. Minnie, in passing, caught at some iris-leaves, and clung to them. As soon as she could wipe the water from her mouth, she called out, "Allow me to bid you good-by, Mr. Turtle. I think I can take as good care of myself as you've taken of me thus far, and henceforth I will save you the trouble."

"What's that? I'm rather thick of hearing," said turtle, from under the mud.

"Good-by, that's all!" And, by the time he had reached the end of his log once more, Minnie was floating down the brook on a pond-lily leaf, diving every now and then to cleanse herself from the mud which turtle had dragged her through.

"Why shouldn't I live by myself? Where's the use in giving others so much trouble?" she said now. "Why cannot I play with the flowers and butterflies, run races with the ripples, and bright little fishes, in the brook; or sleep on any bank of moss, or in any empty bird's nest that I can find? At least, let me try; and, if I grow hungry or lonesome, there are enough good people to take me in."

CHAPTER XXV.

Minnie told them that, in her father's house stood a statue, with wings on the wrists and feet. This was Mercury, whom the Greeks in old times worshipped as one of their many gods.

Now, she thought the butterflies might make a little Mercury of her. No sooner had she said as much than a beautiful pair, spreading wings large enough for sails to her lily-leaf boat, floated through the sunshine to settle upon the little woman's shoulders. Then followed smaller ones, with blue, white, and yellow wings; and, fastening themselves to her ankles and wrists, up, up, they all flew together!

But the next day Minnie found her little friends creeping about with their wings sadly sprained. So she would not often let them repeat this experiment.

O, I should have to write a larger book than this to tell you what good times Minnie had with the butterflies; into what pleasant places they were always leading her; how gentle and playful they were, and how their wings were perfumed with the flowers they had lived among.

She loved to have them follow her when she walked, especially that little golden kind you have often seen in the meadows. Some followed, some fluttered on before, as if she were a little queen, and they her body-guard.

There were no angry voices now, no envious neighbors; no Master Squirrel came to repeat disagreeable stories. Instead of that stifled squirrel-hole in the elm, she had the sweet air of heaven about her now. Instead of that crowded yellow-bird's nest, where Minnie had felt in the way, she had now the wide meadow, with room enough in its soft, green lining, for herself and all her friends.

But, alas! Minnie was the one, this time, to cause trouble and discontent. Only to gratify her wilful temper, she did what she would have given half the world to undo afterwards. It was a little thing,--you would hardly call it wicked; and yet it grieved and drove away her gentle friends, and would have cost her own life, but for an accident. These little things make half the mischief in the world.

CHAPTER XXVI.

At first Minnie tried to be good-natured, and laugh at their pranks; but, warm and tired as she was, you cannot wonder that her patience didn't last.

Some children would have roughly driven the butterflies away--have pelted them with stones, perhaps, and broken their beautiful wings. But Minnie could not forget how kind they had been; and besides, you know, they were not such little things to her as they seem to us; they were almost as large as herself.

She only arose, and, turning her back, would not speak to them, or spoke in such a snappish manner that the butterflies were frightened, and flew away.

Left alone, she espied, near the wood, something that looked like a side-saddle, just large enough for a little body like herself. She sprang to see if there were a tiny horse to fit, and thought how quickly he should gallop off with her, so far that the butterflies could not follow--no, not if they wore their wings off!

But the saddle proved only to be a flower, so much like a wadded leather cushion, that Minnie took her seat upon it, and was swaying back and forth with its tall, stiff stem, when she noticed that it was surrounded by a row of leaves more curious, even, than the flower.

Each leaf was like a little pitcher, with such great ears that Minnie wondered if it were not the very kind she had heard her mother talk about, when she was whispering secrets. There they stood, like the forty jars in which Ali-Baba caught the forty thieves, in the Arabian Nights.

"Here's a place to hide!" She had hardly said it, when the butterflies came in sight, and Minnie slipped into the tallest pitcher, unseen by them, she thought.

But no--they found her; and now was Minnie's time to laugh. Fold their wide wings together, crumple them as they might, not one of the butterflies could crowd himself through the narrow neck of the pitcher. They could only stand and look down wistfully at the roguish face within.

"I'm glad to see you! shake hands!" said Minnie, shaking their slender wrists till they begged her to be still.

"Ah! Minnie, not so rough! Come, now, don't be cross any longer. Come out and play with us!"

"Don't you wish I would? Don't you wish you could catch me?" was all the answer she made.

"But we've found a bee that a bird killed, and we saved the honey-bag for you."

In vain they urged. Minnie was very stubborn. She laughed at the butterflies, and teased them, until they were offended, and, one by one, flew back to the brook.

And, now that she had leisure to look about, the little girl found herself in an uncomfortable place. Not only was the pitcher half full of water, but so narrow that she could hardly move, and lined with stiff hairs, that seemed like thorns to tiny hands like hers. She would not stay here.

But how to escape was the question! She only climbed the sides to slip back again; her arms were scratched till they bled; her garments were heavy with the water in which they drabbled. Night was coming down; she could hear the crickets sing; she caught glimpses of birds flying home to their nests; yet all were so noisy or so busy that they could not hear her voice.

How she wished, now, that her rudeness had not driven the butterflies away! But it was too late for such wishes; they had gone.

CHAPTER XXVII.

At last she fell asleep from very weariness, and awoke to find a faint red light above the eastern hills. It was morning--morning! Another hour would see the sun rise, and bring some friend, perhaps, to help her away from her prison.

When some kind friend awakens you at sunrise on a summer morning, and, feeling drowsy, you long to turn and sleep again, and wish daylight would never come, you must suppose that you were in Minnie's place, and see then if you do not find it easier to spring from your beds. Because the sunshine comes to us so freely, we must not forget how precious and beautiful it is.

Suppose the darkness, instead of lasting for one night, should last whole months, as it does at the far north. What a damp, dismal world it would be! How we should grope from place to place, and, sitting in our houses by the flicker of poor lamps, how we should long for the sunshine--for the beaming, generous light and pleasant warmth that spread now over all the land!

The birds began to rustle among the boughs, or, half asleep still, sing short dreamy songs upon their nests; but Minnie could not make them hear her little voice, and had resolved to call no more, but drown or starve, if she must, when a humming-bird came wheeling and buzzing by.

He was such a noisy fellow himself, that, like the rest, he might have passed on without noticing Minnie's cry, but he paused to drink at the pitcher, where he knew that water was hid; and what was his surprise to find an old acquaintance there!

Minnie was always ready for a joke; so she popped up her head like the little men you have seen shut into boxes, that, when the cover is lifted, start up and frighten you.

She knew very well that if humming-bird flew away at first, his curiosity would lead him back again. She laughed to see how quickly he flitted into the wood, and then how cautiously he came forth, and, from bough to bough and plant to plant, made his way to her side once more.

Then Minnie's face grew serious, as she told her little friend how much she had suffered and feared through the long, long night, and begged that he would help her to escape. He was not half strong enough to lift her, though he tried till his bill ached with dragging at her tangled hair.

And this work, if hard to him, was not, as you may judge, the most agreeable to Minnie. She persuaded the humming-bird to leave her for a while, and see if he could not find help, or, at least, find something for her to eat.

It happened that, in seeking food for Minnie, the bird found something of which he was especially fond himself; so, after eating his fill, he went humming across the meadow, never thinking again of the friend he had promised to help.

Very impatiently the little girl expected him every moment, until an hour had passed, and still she waited, hungry and alone.

Then came a great flapping of wings overhead, and a rustling such as she had once heard when a hawk flew into her father's poultry-yard. He had eaten the white chicken that she called her own, and it was as large as she was now. Suppose he should eat her!

The rush of wings came nearer, and the bird, whatever his name might be, alighted close beside Minnie, who ventured to peep over the edge of her pitcher, and beheld a curious, tall, awkward creature, such as she had never seen before in her life.

She coughed to attract his attention, and he turned toward her a bill as long as her own arm was once, and began to stalk about on legs longer, even, than his bill, and that looked like a pair of stilts.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Then, without waiting to be asked, the stork broke the leaf-stem, and, turning it upside down, shook Minnie out into the grass.

It was so good to stretch herself in the pleasant sunshine, that Minnie folded her hands, and lay there quietly as if she was asleep, or dead.

The stork travelled around her on his stilts, and Minnie heard him say, "In all my flying, I never came across such an odd little creature before; it looks like a woman, yet isn't larger than a bird. Its feathers are like a humming-bird's, and yet they are pretty well worn out. I wonder how it happens!"

With this he began to poke and pull at her cloak; finally, off it came, and stork held it up in the sun for examination. Then he eyed the little silk apron her mother had made, and twitched it by one corner, till Minnie began to think he would eat her piece by piece.

So, the first time he turned his head away, she sprang to her feet, and, without once looking behind, ran, leaped the fences and the fallen boughs, and, reaching her home by the brook-side, hid under the shadow of a stone.

And high above her, she watched the stork beating the air with his heavy wings, and sailing on out of sight.

After eating some savory roots, which the mouse had taught her how to find, and taking a berry or two for dessert, Minnie jumped into the brook, which looked warm and tempting as it rippled through the sunshine.

She could swim as swiftly as any fish, and was so very fond of the sport that she soon forgot her weariness. Laughing and shouting, she started in chase of a swarm of little minnows, whose silvery sides shone like moonbeams when they darted across the brook.

Minnie kept gaining ground, and thought, at last, that she could lay her hand upon the minnows, crowded all together as they swam; but, lo! at the first touch, like so many bubbles of quicksilver, they scattered far and wide. Some shot before her, some dodged behind her back, some hid their silly noses under stones and weeds, thinking, if only their eyes were out of sight, that nobody else could see them.

Of these last, Minnie caught several; but they slipped through her fingers again before she could be certain that she had them there. She might as well have tried to hold one of the ripples of the brook.

Now that the butterflies had forsaken her, Minnie found it lonely in the meadow, and spent most of her time by the stream. When it was low she would trip over the wet, rough stones in its bed so fast that the dragon-flies, with all their wings, could hardly keep pace with her.

And, when the little stream was full to its brim, she would nestle inside of a water-lily, and float for hours, half asleep, watching the sunny ripples pass. In more restless moods, she would climb tall bulrushes, or swing among the long, ribbon-like iris leaves. There was no end to the ways she had of amusing herself.

But one day, when she was swinging, a boy mistook her for a butterfly, and, springing among the iris-leaves, had almost caught her in his hat. Another day, as she was floating in the brook, an angler came, and threw a pretty, gay-winged fly into the water. When Minnie seized this, a sharp hook pierced her hand, and, the next thing she knew, she was lifted high in the air on the fisherman's line! In an instant she freed herself from the hook, and fell back into the water; but it was many days before the wound stopped smarting, and many more before it healed.

Still another time, Minnie found the brook covered with mosquitoes; the fields were parched with the August sun; and the road, where all the birds had gone to chat with the butterflies, was hot and dusty. So the little girl nestled under some cool violet leaves. In the woods violets blossom all the year round, you know, not plentifully as in spring, but here and there you find a cluster in bloom.

Such an one Minnie found, and, when she stretched herself in the grateful shade of its leaves, the sweet flowers looked down at her like the blue eyes of her mother, and the wind, that was whispering through the long, fine grass, seemed her dear lullaby.

But, as she leaned her head on the moss at the violet roots, and thought of home, there came a sudden jar, and the next moment she was rolling in a heap of dusty earth, and vainly striving to free herself, as you have seen ants when their nest was broken open.

A man was digging up the sod of violets to plant on the grave of his little child that was dead. Minnie feared that, if he detected her, he would stick her on a pin, as some new kind of butterfly, for his cabinet. She hardly dared breathe until his work was finished, and the man had gone away.

CHAPTER XXIX.

She had barely strength to climb a tall pine-tree near in whose boughs she had often swung, through the long afternoons. But that was in happier days. The sighing of the wind among the branches, which used to be such pleasant music, was so mournful now that it filled Minnie's eyes with tears. It seemed as if a hundred soft, sad voices were calling, just as Minnie's heart called, for her mother to come and fold her in her own dear arms once more, and comfort her, and forgive her, and take her home, never, never to wander or be disobedient again.

"Halloa!" said a voice. "What's the matter this time? Have you lost your fine cloak, or has some one else grown tired of my little woman, and sent her off to starve?"

"Pray, squirrel, don't tease me, now. I'm so homesick, and so poor, and tired, and discouraged, that it seems to me I shall die."

"That's what I said you'd come to, when you left us; but I'm your friend, Minnie, though I am such a rude fellow, and I don't mean you any harm. Good-by!"

Master Squirrel was frisking off, when Minnie called, "Wait, wait! Couldn't you--"

"O, you mustn't ask any favors. I'm full of business and care. Since we parted I have found a mate; and have a nest of my own, and lots of little ones. Call and see us!"

He had hardly gone, when Mrs. Yellow-bird came in sight. "My dear friend," Minnie began.

"A pretty friend!" she interrupted; "think of the trouble you've caused me!"

"How?"

"Ah, you can pretend not to know; but I am sure Master Squirrel has told you what he did, in spite, because I helped carry the humming-bird home for you, one day, and tipped him out of the car. You never even came to say you were sorry."

"How could I? I do not even know what the mischief was."

"He upset my nest, and killed all my pretty little birds!" And she poured forth a song that seemed to say, "All my little ones, all my pretty birds gone! I can never be happy again!"

Even after yellow-bird was out of sight, the sad notes of her song came back, and she never knew of the tears that Minnie shed for her.

A spider now let herself down by her silken thread from the bough above, where she had been listening to Minnie's words, and pitying her sorrow.

"Come! this is no way to be happy," she said, "and no way to make friends. Who'd care to know such a ragged little witch as you? And you're dusty as a toad. Why don't you wash your face, and mend your gown, and let folks see you are good for something?"

"O, I have tried!" said Minnie, mournfully. "I tried to sew a new gown out of elm leaves; but they were so tender they wilted and tore before I could put them together. Then I picked some beautiful oak leaves, and they were so tough they blunted my needle, and frayed the spider-webs I was sewing with."

"O, well, come down in the grass, and see what we can do together."

Down leaped Minnie, like a squirrel, and down dropped spider on her silken thread. They ran through the grass together till they came to a dwarf-oak, from which Minnie picked the large leaves, while spider wove them together with her curious web.

Minnie seated herself on a mushroom, and watched her good-natured friend at work. Spider wove her threads back and forth, till the seams appeared to be laced together with silvery, silken cords. She finished each with silver tassels; and, when Minnie had dressed in her handsome gown, wove a scarf of silver-gauze to throw across her shoulders.

Then Minnie twisted grass-blades together, as yellow-bird had taught her, and made a strong girdle for her waist, and tucked a rose leaf under it for apron, and picked for bonnet a purple snap dragon, with a golden frill inside.

But, alas, the happy, laughing look was gone from Minnie's eyes; and the rags and the little sun-burnt face looked out beneath all her finery!

CHAPTER XXX.

"Don't I? It's all I have lingered here for--the hope of seeing my queer little woman again. My own home is far off, beside the blue ocean, where I can hear the pleasant music of the waves."

"How I should like to hear them!" Minnie exclaimed. "Do they make as loud a sound as the water of the brook?"

"Not much louder when the weather is fair; but, in a storm, they roar like thunder, and don't they throw dainty breakfasts upon the rocks for me, then!"

"What! honey, and rose leaves, and berries?"

"No; where should they come from? The waves bring good fat fish, and clams, and black lobster-claws, that get broken in the storm."

"O, dear, is that all?"

"If you like it better, they bring shells, and pebbles white as eggs, and beautiful seaweeds gay as any garden-flower, and little red crabs, and curious star-fish. Come home with me, and I'll show what the waves can do!"

Minnie was not sorry to leave the brook, which had become so unsafe for her; and, besides, you know she was always ready for a change. So, begging the stork to bend his neck as near the ground as he could, she clambered upon his back. Then stork outspread his broad, strong wings, and up they flew, and on, on, on, I cannot tell how many miles, till they reached the ocean-side.

Minnie had seen wide rivers and lakes before; but never anything equal to this mighty ocean, which lay beneath them like an enormous mirror, as they flew,--like a great glittering floor of glass.

On one side it stretched far out--nothing but water--till it reached the sky; on the other, it was bordered by a beach of smooth, white sand, over which lay strewn the gay seaweeds, and pebbles, and shells, about which stork had told her.

Glad to stand on her feet again, Minnie skipped along the shore, stooping often to admire some smooth, pearly shell, or glistening pebble, or heap of shining bubbles thrown up by the waves, and changing like opals in the sun.

It seemed as if the little waves were chasing her; as if they ran up the smooth sand on purpose to kiss her feet; as if they were asking her to accept the pretty weeds and stones which they kept tossing on the beach.

"O, stork, what a beautiful place it is! We will stay here as long as we live!" she said.

"I don't know about that. The beach is a good place after a storm; but we can't dine on bubbles and pebbles, Minnie, so climb my back again, and I'll take you across to the rocks."

A long, black ledge, against which the waves kept dashing, to turn white with foam, and leap glittering into the air,--this was the place toward which stork now steered.

The little woman could not but tremble as she looked down upon all the restless waves which stretched on every side as far as she could see. It was a beautiful sight; but Minnie knew that, if she should fall, the ocean would swallow her more easily than ever stork swallowed a minnow in the brook.

The rocks were wet, they found, and slippery; half covered with coarse seaweed, that was brown as leaves in winter, and did not look like any growing thing. But, selecting a higher ledge, which the sun had dried, stork asked Minnie to sit here and rest, while he went in search of food.

At first she watched the beautiful glittering foam, which leaped so lightly into the air, and then rolled back from the stones, in scattered drops, like showers of red pearls.

Then a croak called Minnie's attention; and, looking across the rocks, she saw stork almost choking himself with trying to swallow a fish too large for his throat. Down it went, at last; and now she watched how cautiously and silently stork crept from stone to stone, lifting his wings that he might easier walk on tip-toe with his clumsy feet. Suddenly down went his snaky neck, and, when it rose, another fish was writhing in his bill.

The little girl was so absorbed in watching her friend at his work, that she did not notice how night was falling, until a gust of cold sea-air made a chill creep over her.

Then, looking about, she found that the water had risen on every side, so as almost to cover the rocks on which she sat. Stars one by one were coming out in the sky, and she called loudly for stork to take her back to the shore.

CHAPTER XXXI.

But, when Minnie came to look at them, it seemed to her like eating worms, or bugs; and, though stork assured her that in England he had seen some of the finest people eat these snails, she could not make up her mind to put one in her mouth.

So, a bright thought struck stork. Leaving Minnie on the beach, he seized a clam, rose high in the air, and let it fall with such force that the shell broke; out dropped its contents, and the little girl was hungry enough to eat them with a relish.

And, on their way home, stork stopped where there were birds' eggs in plenty. Minnie remembered yellow-bird's grief over the loss of his young, and could not bear to rob the nests at first. But hunger drove her to it afterwards.

Stork settled into his own quiet nest at last, and Minnie, creeping under his wing to keep warm, slept soundly, lulled by the music of the waves.

The next morning Minnie found the beach all over star-shaped tracks, too small for the stork's great feet. She found, soon, that these belonged to a curious little bird, that came in flocks. These skipped about the beach, as if they were trying to dance, or learning to take their steps. They were not larger than a robin, but had long legs and bills, so as to wade and catch fish among the waves.

Minnie made friends with them, and offered to give them lessons in dancing, of which they seemed so fond; but they told her they had only learned their droll steps from a habit of skipping away from waves when the tide was coming in.

Still, they allowed her to arrange them for a contra dance, and, though she had some trouble in persuading part to wait while the others went through their figure, Minnie laughed till she was tired, with the funny sight they made.

As the tide left the beach, Minnie found plenty of rocks, and all along the crevices of the rock were snails, such as stork had brought her the night before; and, on the sides, barnacles, a kind of fish that, except it is white and hard, looks like some plant growing. In hollows, where there were pools of water, she saw purple mussels, their shells half open that they might enjoy the sun.

Then the seaweeds were different from anything she had ever seen. They were shaped like trees,--apple-trees, or willows, or elms; but were of the gayest colors you can think,--bright red, pink, purple, yellow, green, and some were jet black, and pretty shades of brown. Some had fruit on them,--dark yellow berries, or apples, with a rosy side like any on our trees, only small as the head of a pin. The tallest of the trees were not higher than the length of your hand. It was like a little fairy forest.

Then Minnie found, to her surprise, that the snails, which seemed so fastened into the rocks by their shell, moved, shell and all. She found them travelling in every direction,--but O, so slowly! It made her ache to see them. She could run across the beach a dozen times before a snail had moved an inch.

Sometimes she took them in her hands and carried them to the pool they were trying to reach; but they always said it made them dizzy and confused to fly along so fast, and they preferred their own slow way.

Sometimes the snails ran races with each other. That was a droll thing to watch, for they all travelled as slowly, it seemed to Minnie, as the minute-hand on the clock in her father's office. They would start together, large snails and little ones, white snails and yellow, brown and black, striped, spotted, shaded, dragging their houses after them. There was a pretty little fellow, with a shell so bright it looked like gold; he almost always won the race.

One day Minnie picked up a beautiful purple mussel-shell, lined with pearl, and with a ledge of pearl inside, that served her for a seat. She launched this on the waves, and they bore her out to sea, where she drifted on without a fear, she knew how to swim so well, in case her boat upset; and then the beach birds were always ready to sail alongside of her little bark, and they could carry tidings home, should any harm befall her.

CHAPTER XXXII.

Then all the changing colors of the water, and the pretty wreaths of foam, delighted her. She built a house, for herself, of such white pebbles and shells that it looked like a little marble palace. And the tables and seats inside, and the bed, were all beautiful mother-of-pearl.

But a storm came one day, and washed away her house, and dashed the waves so high upon the beach, that Minnie fled for her life.

It happened a spruce-tree stood not far from the shore; so she scrambled up into its branches, both to be sheltered from, and to watch, the storm.

It was awful to see the great waves rise and beat against the beach, as if they meant to wash the whole world away, and to hear the grating of the stones they clashed together, and see the great mats of seaweed they tore from the rocks, and the shells they swept out of their crevices, and tossed on the shore in heaps.

And the water kept rising, and rising, till it covered the beach, and came nearer and nearer, until it reached the roots of the very tree into which Minnie had climbed. It had been hard enough to bear the beating of the branches in the wind, but now must she be drowned, so far from her home, and no one ever dream what had become of her?

Minnie screamed with fright, and then, through the storm, she seemed to hear a low song, such as her mother used to sing, and, instead of the rough spruce branches, it seemed as if her mother's arms were about her now.

She opened her eyes in wonder. Could it be that the soft hand she had missed so long was stroking her curls once more? that the dear voice she had never thought to hear again was singing soft lullabies over her? that Allie was looking in her face, and Frank was holding her pale hand in his?

Yes, and, stranger still, her mother and Franky declared that they had been with her all the while. On that first day of my story, when the squirrel came,--it seemed years ago to Minnie, now,--she had fallen from the fence, and bruised her head, and had been sick with a fever ever since, and they thought she must have dreamed these marvellous things.

Certain it was that, when the little girl looked in the glass, she found herself large as ever, though pale and very thin. Her gown, too, was made of muslin, instead of forest leaves; and, instead of being perched on a pine-bough, here she stood in her own father's home!

And here she resolved to stay and be content. For, whether awake or in a fever-dream, Minnie had learned this, that, let it be large or small, there is, in all this great wide world, no place so safe and pleasant as our home. And this, besides, that the handsomest, kindest, gayest among strangers, will never make up for the loss of our own friends, the parents that have watched over us ever since we were born, the brothers and sisters that have played by the same fireside, and under the same green trees.

Dear children, when you are older, you will find that all the people in this world have strayed, like Minnie; that they wander about, making acquaintance with many creatures, but still unsatisfied; that they encounter storms, and suffer weariness and loneliness, and long for those who dwell in the far-off home.

Yes, and some morning we all shall wake in our Father's house, and find about us the blessed voices and dear forms of those we have loved; and then it will be like a dream that we seemed to lose them once.

That home is on the other side of the stars. But Frank and Minnie are young yet, and expect to find it here. They are young, and cannot believe that their senses may be mistaken, and that all Minnie's curious changes happened in a dream. Many an afternoon they still spend in looking for the wondrous weed that will make them understand the language of birds, and squirrels, and butterflies.

And, to tell you the truth, I more than half believe they will find it yet.