“Wouldn’t you know Mariette, if you saw her, Father?” I asked; and Jeanette coming in from the room where the child was at the moment, led the good Father away to see her. When he came back, he said no more for some time, but sat thinking, with his head bent forward, and his eyes half closed. Then he called Jeanette, and somewhat to my surprise, gave very strict orders for concealing the fact of the little girl’s residence in our house. My little room was to be assigned to her; a large, wide, rather cheerful, long uninhabited room, up stairs, was to receive a table, and a few chairs from somewhere else, and to be made a sort of play-room for her, and I and Jeanette were to do the very best we could to make the little prisoner happy, while her existence was to be kept secret from every one but our three selves. At the same time he laid the strongest injunctions upon me to abstain from even hinting to any one the adventure I had met with in the wood, and never to call the child Mariette de Salins, but merely Mariette, or Mariette Brun. And now began a new sort of existence for me. Mariette became, as it were, my property—at least I looked upon her almost as such. I had carried her in the forest. I had led her along by the hand. I had brought her there. She was my little foundling, and my feelings toward her were as strange as ever came into the breast of a boy of thirteen. There was something parental about them. I could almost have brought myself to believe that I was her father; and yet I looked upon her very much in the light of a toy, as grown-up parents will sometimes do in regard to their children. I was with Mariette the greater part of every day, playing with her, amusing her, devising all sorts of games to entertain her. She soon became very fond of me, and quite familiar; would sit by the hour with her arms round my neck, and would tell me little anecdotes of her own home. A pleasant home it seemed to have been till the last fearful events occurred, full of harmony, and peace, and domestic joy. Continually she seemed to forget the present, in pictures of brighter hours gone by, but from time to time—especially at first—a torrent of painful memories would seem to burst upon her, and the end of the little tale would be drowned in tears.