Prudence laughed. She was glad to laugh. She wanted to stretch up her arms in her relief. She had hardly known how great had been the tension upon her in these few moments with her cousin. "You'd better tell Leander you're sorry," called Mrs. Ffolliott to her daughter; "and I wish you'd be a trifle more careful--" Here she was interrupted by a whoop from somewhere,--reenter Leander at a full run. "I say!" he yelled, "Devil's gnawed his cord. I was punishin' him. I say, sis, have you been 'n' done anything to him? Oh, there he is! He's got to catch it for this!" The boy threw himself forward with his hands out to seize the cord that extended from the crow's leg over the wall and off to the top of the nearest tree. But, as the tips of his fingers touched the string, Devil gave a hoarse caw, and sailed off towards the water. Leander shrieked out, "Oh, darn that Devil!" hit his toe on a bat he had left on the lawn, and fell forward with great force on his nose, which immediately began to bleed profusely. Then there was running to and fro by the three women, and a demanding of lint, and alum, and this thing and that, by Mrs. Ffolliott. She looked with terror at the stream of blood that poured from that small nose. As Carolyn had often said, her mother was frightened when Leander was well, fearing he might be ill, and when he was ill, being sure he was going to die. As soon as Leander could speak, he demanded cobwebs. He said that cobwebs were to be stuffed into his nose, and he should immediately die if this remedy were not applied. "Does he think we have our pockets full of cobwebs?" asked Prudence, in so light a tone that the boy, as he half lay in his mother's arms, kicked one leg violently in resentment, and said indistinctly that he wished Prue's nose bled worse 'n his. "Thank you," sweetly responded Prue; "then we could bleed and die together, and there'd be no more worry about us." This the boy also resented as savoring of mockery, and he kicked again. Mrs. Ffolliott was actually weeping by this time, lest her son should do himself an injury. She begged Prudence to be careful; she asked her not to speak again, for she might inadvertently say something that dear Leander might not like. Upon this Prudence turned and walked away, but, at the end of the piazza, she paused to inform the group assembled that she was going to the barn, for she was positive she had once seen cobwebs in the roof of the hay-loft. She did go to the stable, and climbed into the mow, but by the time she had reached the door by which hay was put in, she forgot all about Leander and his nasal hemorrhage. The door was open, and there was the sea but some rods away, with no intervening wall in front. The building stood on a bit of rising ground, and the girl looked on a short stretch of glittering sandy beach. She sat down on the threshold, her feet hanging out. After she had gazed intently for a few moments, she exclaimed aloud: