After a while the first manager of "Gray's Hotel" left his situation, and Fred Rayburn was his successor. All feeling against him was quite forgotten. Indeed, with sturdy Gilbert Gray to keep him steady, Fred was a different man. He prospered exceedingly; all things went well with him. And yet, he would have given all his wealth to see his gentle, sad-faced, silent wife look like the pretty, happy Janet who had played with her boys in the old sitting-room over the Gateway. "Janet," he said one day, when something had made them talk of the lost children, "I wonder how you can bear the sight of me. It was really my fault. But for my folly and selfishness, you would never have had to leave them." "Dear heart, I loved you before God gave me them, and your grief for them made me love you more. And, maybe, nothing but such a sorrow would have made us one, as we are now." "You mean, would have made me think? You are right there. I never really saw that I had sinned till I felt that—that dreadful blow. There was mercy in the chastisement for me, but for you, my poor Janet—" "Hush! You and I are one," was her quiet answer. "I can never forget my pretty Frank and Fred, but I am content, dear. You and I are one." [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER X. FRANK'S MESSAGE TO "MUDDIE." LITTLE Fred, all alone in the world, and thrown upon the mercy of perfect strangers, was surely very fortunate in having crept up Betty's garden walk, rather than to any other cottage in Edgestone. For I suspect that he would have found his way to the poorhouse, and, in the state he was in at the time, this would have had most disastrous effects. Having been the youngest, and not quick at speaking, he spoke very indistinctly long after he was voluble enough. His inability to pronounce the letter "r" made his speech sound babyish. But in two years, he had grown so much, and had so completely lost the baby face and the baby ways of the little brother Frank had taken such care of, that Frank would hardly have known him again. He looked as old for his six years now as he had looked young for four. A silent, sad-looking boy, with a half-puzzled expression in his fine dark eyes, which sometimes made people wonder if he were "quite like other children." His step-grandmother would never have recognized her merry, mischievous, laughing torment in this quiet, tall boy, who seemed to care for nothing but being of use to Betty. As I have said before, he proved a careful messenger, and earned many a penny, and every penny was brought to Betty with some little pride. One day she said to him— "You earn so many pence, Fred, that I'm going to keep half to buy your clothes. Think of that, now!" Fred looked up at her earnestly. "Don't you want them, Mrs. Betty?" Which was his chosen name for her. "I don't want them all," she said, wondering what was coming, for he so seldom spoke except to answer a question. "Then, if you don't want them, may I keep half for Fwank?"