"Merciful goodness!" croaked a frightened voice. "I thought you was asleep in your bed, Lottie." Janice had followed the little girl to the doorway. She saw but dimly the store itself and the shelves of dusty merchandise. From the back room where he had been sitting with his violin, a gray, thin, dusty-looking man came quickly and seized Lottie in his arms. "Child! child! how you frighten me!" he murmured. Then he looked over the little girl's head and blinked through his spectacles at Janice in the doorway. "I'm certainly obliged to ye," he said. "She--she gets away from the house and I don't know it. I--I can't watch her all the time and she ain't got no mother, Miss. I certainly am obliged to ye for bringing her home." "She was down on the old wharf at the foot of the street, trying to wake the echo from the woods across the inlet," said Janice, gravely. The gray man hugged his daughter tightly, and his eyes blinked like an owl's in strong daylight, as he peered through his spectacles at Janice. "She--she loved to go there--always," he murmured. "I go with her Sundays--and when the store is closed. But she is so quick--in a flash she is out of my sight." "Can--can nothing be done for her?" questioned Janice, in a whisper. "She cannot hear you--now," said Hopewell Drugg, gloomily, shaking his head. "And the doctors here tell me she is almost sure to be dumb, too. If I could only get her to Boston! There's a school for such as her, there, and specialists, and all. But it would cost a pile of money." "You play the fiddle, father," commanded little Lottie. "And make it quiver--make it cry, father! Then _I_ can hear it." He set her down carefully, still shaking his head. Her strange little voice kept repeating: "Play for her, father! Play for her, father!" Hopewell Drugg picked up the violin and bow from the end of the counter. He leaned against the counter and tucked the violin under his chin. There was only a brown light in the dusky store, and the dust danced in the single band of sunlight that searched out a knot hole in the wall of the back room--the shed between the store proper and the cottage in the rear. "Darling, I am growing old, Silver threads among the gold----" The old violin wailed out the tune haltingly. The deaf and blind child caught the tremulo of the final notes, and she danced up and down and clapped her little hands. "I can hear that! I can hear that!" she muttered, her lips writhing to form the sounds. Janice felt the tears suddenly blinding her. "I'll come back and see you again--indeed I will!" she said, brokenly, and hugging and kissing little Lottie impetuously, she released her and ran out of the ugly, dark little store. It is doubtful if Hopewell Drugg even heard her. The violin was still wailing away, while he searched out slowly the minor notes of the old, old song. [Illustration: The old violin wailed out the tune haltingly.] CHAPTER VIII A BIT OF ROMANCE