“Oh yes, don’t I! I think it’s splendid!” cried Bertie, with a burst of enthusiasm unusual with him. “I don’t think anything could be nicer in all the world than to go riding with you!” The Squire smiled, rather a sad smile perhaps, but once he had rarely smiled at all. “Please tell me about Tom and Charley,” went on Bertie, with eager interest. “Mrs. Pritchard can tell me all about what they did at home; but she can’t tell me about other things, because she didn’t see. I want to know about them when they went riding with you. What did they do? and where did you go? and what did they like best to talk about when you went out? And did Mary and Violet ever come too?” Bertie forgot in his eagerness and excitement that he had never heard from the Squire’s lips a single word about the sons and daughters he had lost; and he did not know that for fifteen long years their names had never even passed his lips. He asked his questions in absolute ignorance or oblivion of all these facts, and when the father began to tell little anecdotes of the rides he and his children had taken together long, long ago, Bertie listened with undivided interest and pleasure, not in the least realizing—how should he?—that this moment was almost as great a turning-point in his benefactor’s life as the one when he took the child in his arms in the lonely churchyard and called him his adopted son. But so it was. The barrier of reserve that had locked itself like an icy wall about his heart had melted beneath the warm sunshine of a little child’s love. The silence of fifteen long, dreary years had been broken at last, and a load like a leaden weight had rolled away with it. That night the faithful Pritchard remarked to his wife,— “I’ve never seen the master look so like himself since last summer fifteen years.” And Mrs. Pritchard wiped her eyes and answered,— “’Tis the child as has done it, for sure, bless his little heart! Wasn’t I always sure as he would bring a blessing with him when he came?” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XVII. CHRISTMAS-TIDE. BUT in the midst of all his newly-found happiness Bertie did not forget his old friends. He had told the Squire all about his affection for David, and had been encouraged to show all the kindness in his power to the fisher lad, who had been kind to him when he was a lonely little outcast. So almost every day he visited the humble cabin, and wandered with David among the sandhills, and found in him as sympathetic a confident, now that he had happy secrets to tell, as in the old days when these had all been sad. “I do be glad, that I be,” said David again and again, when Bertie told him of his happiness. “I just knew the Lord couldn’t forget thee—didn’t I always tell thee so?” “Yes, you did, and you were quite right. He didn’t ever forget me, though He didn’t remember me in the way I expected quite.”