The Squire showed no uneasiness at hearing this. People were beginning to say that he looked ten years younger already than when Bertie had first come; and the young doctor, who was on more intimate terms with him than anybody else in the neighborhood, was much impressed by the change in him. “To tell the truth, doctor,” said the Squire, smiling, “I am in no wise anxious to discover the child’s parents. I did my best at first, but quite failed in tracing them. I have grown fond of him. He is like my own child now; and, without wishing to be selfish, I shall be personally glad if he is never claimed. He has settled down very comfortably here, and I think I can make him happy.” “There is no doubt as to that, I think. I incline to hope, for both your sakes, that he never will be claimed.” Christmas-time came round in due course; but it did not bring back Bertie’s little playfellows to the empty house behind the trees. He had a letter from Queenie saying that they were all going to spend the holidays at the house of an uncle and aunt; but that she thought they would come home again in March or April, and she hoped it would not be too late to get the young sea-gulls. The Squire was afraid Bertie might be disappointed at not seeing his young friends and sharing together the Christmas festivities; but the child was quite content that it should be so, and, putting his arms about his so-called father’s neck, he whispered,— “I’ve got you, papa. I don’t want anybody else.” The lonely man and the lonely child had grown very dear to one another during these past weeks. They were together during the greater part of the day, and they shared each other’s confidence in a way that was quite peculiar. They had a world of their own, too, other than the material world around them, and one quite unknown to any but themselves. It was the world of the Squire’s buried past, that for many long years he had shut away in his own heart and had striven to forget. A long closed door had at last been unlocked by a childish hand, and old memories awakened into a new life that seemed to bring them a strange sense of peace and consolation. Tom and Charley, Mary and Violet, the gentle mother and the baby Donald, were now as household words on the lips of one who had thought never to speak their names again. To the little boy, who was never tired of hearing stories of their brief lives, they were real and living friends, whose personality was as vivid to him as if they still ran races in the hall and flocked about their father at dusk to beg for the stories he always kept for them. The Squire was called upon as imperiously now for stories as ever in the sweet days of the happy past, and no stories were so eagerly welcomed as those that told of the children whom he began to look on as not lost, but only gone before.