“What is it, girls? Why, what little boy—the poor child! Jo, run and tell Hannah to get some milk heated.” Taking the child in her own motherly arms, Mrs. Marsh hurried into the room and sitting down close beside the fire, began taking off his wet, half-frozen rags, while the girls told her breathlessly how they had found him sobbing under the evergreen. He seemed very drowsy, and looked pitifully white and thin in the glow of the fire. “Jo rubbed his hands and wrapped him in her own cloak; she must be frozen herself,” said Rose, “but she wouldn’t hear of letting me do it. Oh, dear, is he going to die?” Ruth began crying. The little boy did look so badly. “Hush, dears. Of course he isn’t. Why, he’ll be fat and smiling before I get through with him,” laughed Mrs. Marsh. At this moment Jo, followed by Hannah, came in with the hot milk. Hannah rushed off to get a woollen nightgown, while Rose crumbled some bread into the bowl of milk, and Mrs. Marsh fed the half awake child spoonful by spoonful. “Luckily he isn’t frost-bitten,” she murmured. “Jo, dear, get the crib down from the garret with Hannah’s help, and make it up warmly in the little room off mine. I’ll get him to sleep, and then we’ll try and find out where he belongs.” Bathed, fed and wrapped in the snug nightie, the little boy looked, as Jo said, like a fairy changeling. Tucked into the crib, he immediately fell sound asleep. “Put on your wraps, girls, and we’ll run down to the village and find out what we can,” said Mrs. Marsh. “How fortunate it was that you went that way, Jo, with your little friends. But I fear Meg must be worried at your not meeting her. We’ll go to the river first, and see what we can discover there.” The river made a fine sight. A broad stretch had been chosen for the skaters, and along the banks huge bonfires were waving in the wind and filling the air with the sweet breath of burning wood. Dark shapes flitted over the ice, or crowded round the fires, and a gay medley of shouts, laughter and talk rose upward. Meg and the two children were soon found, and Meg heaved a relieved sigh when she saw her mother and sister and Rose and Ruth hurrying toward them. The news was quickly told, and other interested persons gathered round. Presently word went about that a Mrs. Gillig, a widow who lived more or less on charity, had been seeking her only child since early in the afternoon. Some one ran to fetch her, and presently she and Mrs. Marsh were headed toward the Marsh cottage. “The dear child, he just wanted to help me,” the widow kept repeating. “Told me this morning, he did, that he was going to find a fairy as would make things easy for me. Little attention I paid to his talk, bless his poor heart, and so off he goes, and it’s near getting killed he’s been.... Heaven be merciful!” She thanked the girls tearfully before going with Mrs. Marsh.