"Did the bad man hurt Mirry?" he asked, leaning with both arms on my lap and putting up his hand to touch my face. "Yes, very cruelly, Ernie." "Big giant will come and kill him, and fayways put him in the river, and the old wolf wat eat Red Riding Hood eat him, and then the devil will roast him for his dinner." I could but smile, albeit through my tears, at the climax of these threats which seemed to delight and stir the inmost soul of Ernie. His eyes flashed, his cheek crimsoned, his wide red mouth curled with disdainful ire, disclosing the small, pointed pearls within; he seemed transfigured. "And Ernie! what will Ernie do for Mirry?" I asked, as I watched the workings of his expressive face. "Will Ernie let the wicked man kill Mirry?" He looked at his small hands and arms, then extended them wistfully. "Ernie will tell good Jesus," he said, "and he will make Ernie grow big--ever so big--to tie the man and put him in a bag like Clayton's cat." The burlesque was irresistible, and none the less so that the child was so direfully in earnest. To his infant imagination no worse disaster than had befallen Clayton's cat could be devised. This animal, adored by him, had been bagged and exiled, perhaps drowned for aught I know, for stealing cheese from the cupboard sacred to Clayton, by that vengeful potentate, to the despair of Ernie. The idolized kittens, too, which had followed her, had disappeared with their mother, and days of infant melancholy ensued, during which the canaries before referred to were brought as substitutes. The faithful heart still clung to its feline passion, it was evident, though for weeks the memory of that hapless cat had been ignored and its name unmentioned. I believe, after my momentary wrath was over, I should have been content with the punishment suggested by the child, as sufficient even for Basil Bainrothe. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 5: The raft on which Miss Lamarque and her family had found refuge had been swept by the tempest of nearly every soul that clung to it, after a terrible night of storm and rain, during which that courageous lady--that Sybarite of society--sustained the fainting souls of her companions by singing the grand anthems of her Church, in a voice loud, clear, and sweet as that of a dying swan. One child was saved of the nine little ones, and the brother and sister remained almost alone on the raft. Let it be here mentioned that, at no period of her subsequent life, a long and apparently prosperous one, could Miss Lamarque bear to hear the circumstances of the wreck alluded to. Mr. Dunmore and his companions found a watery grave.] CHAPTER IX.