"I don't know writing well enough to put it in a letter, Maurice, and, besides, it would not be fair to Aunt Lydia, after her having such expense with us all these months. Don't you remember that delicious apple pie, Maurice, and the red, red apples to eat with bread in the fields? 'Tis only the last few days Aunt Lydia has got really unkind, and perhaps we are very expensive little children. Besides, Maurice, darling, I did not like to tell you at first, but there is one dreadful, dreadful thing about the Union. However nice a home it might be for you and me, we could not take Toby with us, Maurice. Aunt Lydia said Toby would not be taken in." "Then what would become of our dog?" asked Maurice, opening his velvety brown eyes very wide. "Ah! that I don't understand. Aunt Lydia just laughed, and said Toby should have a yard of rope, and 'twould be cheaper than the Union. I can't in the least find out what she meant." But here Maurice got very red, so red, down below his chin, and into his neck, and even up to the roots of his hair, that Cecile gazed at him in alarm, and feared he had been taken seriously ill. "Oh, Cecile!" he gasped. "Oh! oh! oh!" and here he buried his head on his sister's breast. "What is it, Maurice? Maurice, speak to me," implored his sister. "Maurice, are very ill? Do speak to me, darling?" "No, Cecile, I'm not ill," said the little boy, when he could find voice after his agitation. "But, oh! Cecile, you must never be angry with me for hating Aunt Lydia again. Cecile, Aunt Lydia is the dreadfullest woman in all the world. _Do_ you know what she meant by a yard of rope?" "No, Maurice; tell me," asked Cecile, her face growing white. "It means, Cecile, that our dog--our darling, darling Toby--is to be hung, hung till he dies. Our Toby is to be murdered, Cecile, and Aunt Lydia is to be his murderer. That's what it means." "But, Maurice, how do you know? Maurice, how can you tell?" "It was last week," continued the little boy, "last week, the day you would not come out, Toby and me were in the wood, and we came on a dog hanging to one of the trees by a bit of rope, and the poor dog was dead, and a big boy stood by. Toby howled when he saw the dog, and the big boy laughed; and I said to him, 'What is the matter with the poor dog?' And the dreadful boy laughed again, Cecile, and he said, 'I've been giving him a yard of rope.' "And I said, 'But he's dead.' "And the boy said, 'Yes, that was what I gave it him for.' That boy was a murderer, and I would not stay in the wood all day, and that is what Aunt Lydia will be; and I hate Aunt Lydia, so I do." Here Maurice went into almost hysterical crying, and Cecile and Toby had both as much as they could do for the next half hour to comfort him. When he was better, and had been persuaded to get into bed, Cecile said: