When a week had passed, and the villagers had satisfied themselves that Jack had really very little to tell them about his tiny "relative," they began to regard her adoption by him as an established fact no longer requiring comment. Little Miss Primrose was not likely to fade and droop for want of care and love, for Jack regarded himself as both father and mother to her; and where experience in the latter capacity might reasonably be found wanting, the good women of the village were only too glad to supply him with their own. He constructed with his own hands a wonderful cradle-bed for the baby, and one day when a travelling-cart came round, laid out an extravagant sum upon a variety of toys and articles of comfort for his darling. When too busy himself to give her air and exercise, he hired a trustworthy little maid from the village, of sufficiently staid deportment to be trusted with the baby, and wheel her out, when the spring-days came, in her carriage, in which she sat, like a golden-haired queen, waving gracious hands at the birds and butterflies as she passed. So with but an occasional outburst of grief and frantic cries for her mother, which much distressed Jack's kind heart during the first few days after her arrival, Little Miss Primrose settled herself down as an inmate of the boatman's cottage, and became quite at home. CHAPTER III. THE STAR IN THE EAST. "She has wit and song and sense, Mirth and sport and eloquence." --HUNGARIAN. It was just six months after the arrival of the boatman's unexpected little guest, that very late one evening, when the long summer twilight had almost deepened to night, a mysterious horseman was seen by a few of the villagers, who had not yet closed their doors for the night, riding in the direction of Jack's riverside cot. Jack never retired to rest very early, and was still plying his shoemaking trade by the light of a solitary candle when he too heard the clatter of the horse's hoofs along the narrow road under the hill, and was somewhat startled when the sound suddenly ceased before his own door, which still stood open to let in the sweet summer breeze. [Illustration: "HE WATCHED THE TALL HORSEMAN ENTER THE COTTAGE AND HOLD THE CANDLE OVER THE CRIB."]