The walk was pleasant enough, Leam was not called on to rack her brains--those non-inventive brains of hers, which could not imagine things that never happened--for stories wherewith to while away the time, as Fina ran alone, happy in picking the spring flowers growing thick on the banks and hedgerows. Thus the one was amused and the other was left to herself undisturbed; which was an arrangement that kept Leam's good intentions intact, but prevented the penance which they included from becoming too burdensome. Indeed, her penance was so light that she thought it not so great a hardship, after all, to make little Fina her companion in her rambles if she would but run on alone and content herself with picking flowers that neither scratched nor stung, and where therefore neither the surgery of needles nor the dressing of dock-leaves was required, nor yet the supplementary soothing of kisses and caresses for her tearful, sobbing, angry pain. The Broad, always one of the prettiest points in the landscape, was to-day in one of its most interesting phases. The sloping banks were golden with globe-flowers and marsh "mary-buds," and round the margin, was a broad belt of silver where the starry white ranunculus grew. All sorts of the beautiful aquatic plants of spring were flowering--some near the edges, apparently just within reach, tempting and perilous, and some farther off and manifestly hopeless: the leaves of the water-lilies, which later would be set like bosses of silver and gold on the shimmering blue, had risen to the surface in broad, green, shining platters, and the low-lying branches of the trees at the edge dipped in the water and swayed with the running stream. It was the loveliest bit of death and danger to be found for miles round--so lovely that it might well have tempted the sorrowful to take their rest for ever in a grave so sweet, so eloquent of eternal peace. Even Leam, with all the unspoken yearnings, the formless hopes, of youth stirring in her heart, thought how pleasant it would be to go to sleep among the flowers and wake up only when she had found mamma in heaven; while Fina, dazzled by the rank luxuriance before her, ran forward to the water's edge with a shrill cry of delight. Leam called to her to stand back, to come away from the water and the bank, which, shelving abruptly, was a dangerous place for a child. The footing was insecure and the soil treacherous--by no means a proper playground for the rash, uncertain feet of six. Twice or thrice Leam called, but Fina would not hear, and began gathering the flowers with the bold haste of a child disobeying orders and resolved to make the most of her opportunity before the time came of her inevitable capture. Thus Leam, walking fast, came up to her and took her by the arm in high displeasure. "Fina, did you not hear me? You must not stand here," she said,