The skipper and mate were smoking and yarning outside in the saloon; but from the stateroom their voices sounded only like the happy murmur of the sea on a summer's beach. What was the discovery the good lady had made? It was a birth-mark--nay, but two. And although such marks might be similar on two different people, so strange a coincidence has never, perhaps, been known. And so Mrs Skipper thought she knew now some secret of Lotty's history that the child herself was ignorant of. A rocking-chair at sea is a delightful contrivance when the weather is fine, as it was to-night, and this one was swayed or swung only by the vessel's gentle motion. It is a dreamy, drowsy movement; but there was no thought of sleep in Lotty's mind at present, nor in Mrs Paterson's. Lotty would have preferred to listen to a story or to hear a song. 'Sure I'm not too heavy, nursie?' 'Oh no,' was the answer, 'you are very light. Besides, darling, it is not the first time that'---- Then she checked herself, and Lotty undertook to finish the sentence. 'Not the first time you've nursed a little girl, you were going to say.' 'Ye-es,' assented the other. Lotty snuggled closer to her. 'I wish you were my mother. But I never had a mother, never, never, _never_. May I call you mammy?' 'You may call me mammy.' Lotty had not seen that tear. This strange child had her sentimental moments, and had come through grief enough, goodness knows; but somehow mirth was never far away from sorrow. 'So now,' she cried, 'I have a ma, and Norlans has a grandma.' 'Lotty, think now,' said Mrs Skipper, 'were you always, always a little gipsy lass? Think back child.' The girl sat up more, to look the better at the kindly face and eyes. 'Always,' she said slowly. 'Only,' she added, 'there have been times when, if I happened to be in the house of some rich and beautiful lady, reading her palm you know, mammy, I've thought it strange that many things I saw, which most gipsy girls might not have known the use of, were to me quite familiar.' 'Yes?' 'The first harp I saw did not seem to have been the first. When asked to play the piano, nothing about it struck me as new, and I felt familiar with even the smallest of my drawing-room surroundings.' 'Yes?' 'But I know how to account for all that.' 'Well, dear?' 'It all comes, mammy, of reading books of romance and stupidity; and some such stories I quite believed when quite a little tot, especially about the baronet's baby-boy who was stolen by a bad sweep, and who, years and years afterwards, was called to a great house to sweep chimneys and found his real mother, and lived happy ever after. But I'm wiser now, mammy dear. Now, mammy, will you do the first thing I ask you?' 'Yes, child.' 'Well, look there! I've finished my nice drink, and now sing me a song, and I'll fall as sound asleep as your grandchild Norlans. Then don't wake me, but just lift me into bed.'