“I was afraid perhaps—some day—that they would get forgotten; when you are dead, you know, and I have gone away. I thought somebody else might come who wouldn’t know, and who would dig up the gardens and take them right away. I didn’t want them to do that, so I thought if I put the names there, that perhaps people would wonder, and ask whose gardens they were, and then they would hunt about and see the names in the churchyard, and then they would know that they belonged to the children who had all died together long ago, and that would make them feel sorry and they would tell the gardeners not to disturb these gardens, but to keep them nice always, and so Tom and Charley, Mary and Violet, would never be quite forgotten.” The Squire made no reply; he started a little as the long unheard names of his children fell upon his ear, but he did not speak, and only took Bertie’s hand again and led him towards the house. And on the threshold he paused, bent his head and kissed him, saying softly and gently,— “My little boy now.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XVI. WHAT BERTIE DID. A NEW life began from that day forward for little Bertie. He could hardly have defined the change that had passed over his head, but he was keenly alive to it day by day, and as grateful as he was happy at the thing that had come to him. He was no longer the lonely little outcast he once had been. He was no longer a chance guest in this hospitable house, entertained there simply because no other home opened to him, and the master was too kind-hearted to turn him out upon the mercy of a cold world. No, he was no longer a desolate little waif and stray cast up homeless and desolate by the cold sea-waves; he was now the child of the house, tended and loved as if he had been born to the position he occupied, and the cloud of depression that had long weighed more or less upon him during his sojourn there now melted away in the sunshine of the happy present. It was not that Bertie understood, as some others about him did, the great change in his position now that he had been adopted by the Squire of Arlingham, a man of considerable means, and with no near kindred to call his own. There were many discussions in the neighborhood as to the probability of Bertie’s becoming his heir, and inheriting eventually such property as he had to leave, and succeeding to the title of Squire, which had so long been held from father to son by the family who dwelt in the Manor House; but the little boy knew nothing of all this, he was too young to be troubled by thoughts of such a nature. All he knew or cared to know was that he was loved by the Squire, whom he had long secretly idolized in his heart of hearts, and that he had been adopted as a little son, instead of being kindly tolerated as a nameless stranger. Bertie was very happy.