Produced by Al Haines [Illustration: Cover art] [Frontispiece: _Leaning over the edge of the porch she dropped the bundle soundlessly into a bed of marigolds_. (_Page_ 13)] BARBARA LADD BY CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS AUTHOR OF THE KINDRED OF THE WILD, THE HEART OF THE ANCIENT WOOD, A SISTER TO EVANGELINE, POEMS, ETC. ILLUSTRATED BY FRANK VERBECK NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS Copyright, 1902, BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY (Incorporated). All Rights Reserved. Published October, 1902 Eighth Impression, April, 1908. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS "LEANING OVER THE EDGE OF THE PORCH SHE DROPPED THE BUNDLE SOUNDLESSLY INTO A BED OF MARIGOLDS" (_See page 13_) . . . _Frontispiece_ "'WHAT A NICE-LOOKING BOY YOU ARE!' SHE SAID" "'O MEHITABLE--DEMORALISED--BY BARBARA!' VOWED DOCTOR JOHN" "HE SANK OFF AGAIN, FALLING BACK INTO BARBARA'S SUPPORTING ARMS" BARBARA LADD CHAPTER I. She knew very well that she should have started earlier; but if there was one thing that could daunt her wayward and daring little spirit, it was the dark. Now, as she stood, wide-eyed and breathless with suspense, beside her open window, the face of the dark began to change. A gray pallor came over it, and on a sudden she was aware of a black horizon line, ghostly, lonely beyond words, far to the eastward over the yet invisible tree-tops. With this pallor came a chill which Barbara felt on her little, trembling hands, on her eyes, and in her heart: as if the night, in going, had laid aside its benignity and touched the world in farewell with a cold hand of warning and menace. Then, here and there a leaf stood out, palely distinct, upon the thick frondage of the apple-tree whose nearest branches crowded the roof of the porch below her window. There was a faint chirping from the heart of the syringa thicket; and Barbara's ears were so attentive that she caught the drowsy, awakening flutter of small wings down below in the dewy gloom. With the sound came a cool and delicate pungency from the wet currant bushes, puffed upward to her as if the garden world beneath the leaves had drawn a long breath in getting ready to awake. This tonic scent, which nostrils less keen than Barbara's would scarcely have discerned, came to the child as a signal for action. Peculiarly sensitive to the message and influence of odours, she felt this sudden fragrance in her nerves as a summons, a promise, and a challenge, all in one. Noiselessly she pushed the two diamond-paned leaves of her window open to their widest. How the grayness was spreading! A pang of apprehension seized her, lest she had delayed too long. She turned impulsively, and stepped into the darkness of her room.