The next morning Lulu came running up the stairs, exclaiming: "He's done come home, Rocket has. He's at the kitchen door." It was even as Lulu, said, for the homesick brute, suspecting something wrong, had broken from his fastenings, and bursting the stable door had come back to Spring Bank, his halter dangling about his neck, and himself looking very defiant, as if he were not again to be coaxed away. At sight of Hugh he uttered a sound of joy, and bounding forward planted both feet within the door ere Hugh had time to reach it. "Thar's the old colonel now," whispered Claib, just as the colonel himself appeared to claim his runaway. "I'll take him home myself," he said to the old colonel, emerging from his hiding place behind the leach, and bidding Claib follow with another horse Hugh went a second time to Colonel Tiffton's farm. CHAPTER XIV MRS. JOHNSON'S LETTER The spring had passed away, and the warm June sun was shining over Spring Bank, whose mistress and servants were very lonely now, for Hugh was absent, and with him the light of the house had departed. Business of his late uncle's had taken him to New Orleans, where he might possibly remain all the summer. 'Lina was glad, for since the fatal dress affair there had been but little harmony between herself and her brother. The tenderness awakened by her long illness seemed to have been forgotten, and Hugh's manner toward her was cold and irritating to the last degree, so that the young lady rejoiced to be freed from his presence. "I do hope he'll stay all summer," she said one morning, when speaking of him to her mother. "I think it's a heap nicer without him, though dull enough at the best. I wish we could go somewhere, some watering place I mean. There's the Tifftons, just returned from New York, and I don't much believe they can afford it more than we, for I heard their place was mortgaged, or something. Oh, bother, to be so poor," and the young lady gave a little angry jerk at the tags she was unbraiding. "Whar's ole miss's?" asked Claib, who had just returned from Versailles. "Thar's a letter for you," and depositing it upon the bureau, he left the room. "Whose writing is that?" 'Lina said, catching it up and examining the postmark. "Shall I open it?" she called, and ere her mother could reply, she had broken the seal, and held in her hand the draft which made her the heiress of one thousand dollars. Had the fabled godmother of Cinderella appeared to her suddenly, she would scarcely have been more bewildered.