“You favors your mother, honey,” she said, “but your eyes looks at me like your father’s did. They’s dark and tired, now. You’s come over the sea and over the land clear to your granny. Put your head on my breast where your daddy rested when he was a baby.” Hazel put her arms around the old woman’s neck and held her tight. Little warm pulses of feeling swept through her. The pines, the sunset, the bird’s note, and this loving welcome by the open fire, all made her heart beat fast and her body shake. She was sobbing before she knew it. Granny understood what to do. She put the little girl in her chair, and leaving her for a moment came back with a gray kitten, very small and warm and helpless. Hazel ceased crying as she took it on her lap and gently stroked its fur. “Is it named?” she asked after a moment. “No, honey; it’s been saving for you.” “Then, please, I will call it Lucy after my mother.” She stroked it tenderly and thought of the purring black and white kitten in the kitchen at home. “You has a sweet, loving mother, I know.” “I’ve her picture for you.” And that settled the question of whether Granny’s present should be kept until Christmas. It was decided not to open the trunk until morning. A warm supper was eaten before the fire, and then Granny declared that it was time good little girls were in bed. The room in which they sat seemed very large to Hazel. Granny’s big bed was at one end, and the fire-place at the other. A door to the left of the fire-place lead into Hazel’s bedroom, the one other room of the house. “Here your father used to sleep, honey,” Granny said, “and here you rest to-night.” But in this last statement Granny was mistaken. After Hazel had said her prayers and had crept among the soft feathers a terrible feeling of loneliness came over her. She heard her grandmother walking in the other room, and then the light grew less and she knew the lamp was out. Her door was open and she could see shadows on the wall beyond. “Granny,” she called. “Are you going to bed?” “Yes, honey.” “Could I have pussy Lucy with me?” Her grandmother brought her the little kitten and placed it on the pillow. “Shut your eyes, honey, and the sand man will come.” But the sand man refused to visit the little room. Granny went to bed, and Hazel could hear no sound save the chirp of a late cricket outside the open window. Out there were the heavens, where her father had gone, filled with their myriad stars. Was her mother gazing at them and thinking of her? She hugged the kitten, and looked for comfort into the other room. It seemed to her, as she watched the flickering shadows, that the light was growing less. Yes, the fire would go out, and she would be left alone in darkness. Her heart pounded and a strange terror possessed her. She did not yet know this new home, and while she loved the light of the moon and the stars, she hated blackness. If she should wake up alone, the fire gone, only the black night about!