“The plague you have,” returned the Judge, vastly amused at the quiet decision with which she spoke. “Come to stay, hey? But suppose I won’t let you, what then?” “You will,” said Mildred; “and if you turn me out, I shall come right in again. I’ve lived with Oliver’s grandmother as long as I am going to. I don’t belong there, and to-night I started to run away, but the cars left me, and it was cold and dark in the woods, and I was kind of ’fraid, and asked God to take care of me and tell me where to go, and I comed right here.” There was a big lump in the Judge’s throat as he listened to the child, but he swallowed it down, and pointing to the bundle containing Mildred’s Sunday clothes, said, “Brought your things, too, I see. You’ll be wanting a closet and a trunk to put them in, I reckon.” The quick-witted child detected at once the irony in his tone, and with a quivering lip she answered: “They are the best I’ve got. She never bought me anything since mother died. She’s just as cross as she can be, too, and whips me so hard for nothing,—look,” and rolling up her sleeve she showed him more than one red mark upon her arm. Sour and crusty as the Judge appeared, there were soft spots scattered here and there over his heart, and though the largest was scarcely larger than a pin’s head, Mildred had chanced to touch it, for cruelty to any one was something he abhorred. “Poor little thing,” he said, taking the fat, chubby arm in one hand, and passing the other caressingly over the marks,—“poor little thing, we’ll have that old she-dragon ’tended to,” and something very like a tear, both in form and feeling, dropped upon the dimpled elbow. “What makes you stare at me so?” he continued, as he saw how the wondering brown eyes were fixed upon him. “I was thinking,” answered Mildred, “how you ain’t such a cross old feller as folks say you be, and you’ll let me stay here, won’t you? I’d rather live with you than Lawrence Thornton——” “Lawrence Thornton!” repeated the Judge. “What do you know of him? Oh, yes, I remember now that he spoke of finding you asleep; but were you running away to him?” In a few words Mildred told him what her intentions had been, and then said to him again: “But I shall stay here now and be your little girl.” “I ain’t so sure of that,” answered the Judge, adding, as he saw her countenance fall: “What good could you do me?” Mildred’s first thought was, “I can wash the dishes and scrub the floor;” then as she remembered that servants did these things at Beechwood, she stood a moment uncertain how to answer. At last, as a new idea crossed her mind, she said: “When you’re old and lonesome, there’ll be nobody to love you if I go away, and you’ll be sorry if you turn me off.” Why was it the Judge started so quickly and placed his hand before his eyes, as if to assure himself that it was little Mildred standing there and not his only boy,—not Richard, who long ago had said to him: