To Chip, seeing herself as she did, it meant loss of love, home, respect, and all else she now valued, and that she must become a homeless wanderer once more. But Uncle Jud thought otherwise, for now he drew the sobbing girl into his lap. "Quit takin' on so, girlie," he said, choking back a lump; "why, we'll all love ye ten times more fer all this, an' ez fer bein' a nobody, ye're a blessed angel to us fer bringin' the news ye hev." And then he kissed her, while Aunt Mandy wiped her eyes on her apron. The shower, violent for a moment, was soon over; for as Chip raised her wet eyes, a sunshiny smile illumined Uncle Jud's face. "If Cyrus is alive," he said, "as ye callate, I'll thank God till I set eyes on him, and then I think I'll lick him fer not huntin' me up all these years." "But mebbe he found Abby was married 'n' didn't want to," interposed Aunt Mandy. "We mustn't judge him yet." "No, I won't judge him," asserted Uncle Jud; "I'll jest cuff him, good 'n' hard, an' let it go at that. "Ez fer you, girlie, an' jest to set yer mind at rest, we found out what your right name was and where ye run away from last fall, but never let on to nobody. 'Twas your business and nobody else's, an' made no difference in our feelin's, ez ye must see; an' now I'll tell ye how I found out. "I was down to the Corners one day arter ye went to Christmas Cove, 'n' a feller--nice-lookin' feller, too, with honest brown eyes--was askin' if anybody had seen or heard o' a runaway girl by the name o' McGuire. Said she'd run away from Greenvale--'That's 'bout a hundred miles from here,' he said--an' he was huntin' for her. Nobody at the Corners knew about ye 'n' I kept still, believin' ye had reason fer not wantin' to be found out." And now another tide--the thrill of love--surged in Chip's heart, and her face became glorified. And so the clouds rolled away. That night Chip wrote a brief but curious letter, so odd, in fact, it must be quoted verbatim:-- [Illustration: "Quit takin' on so, girlie," he said.] "Mr. Martin Frisbie, "Please send word at once to Mr. Cyrus Walker that his brother Judson, who lives in Riggsville, wants to see him. No one else must be told of this, for it's a secret. "One who Knows." But Chip's secret was a most transparent one, for when this missive reached Martin three days later, he recognized its angular penmanship and similarity to the note Aunt Comfort still treasured, and knew that Chip wrote it. It startled him somewhat, however, for Old Cy's youthful history was unknown to him, and suspecting that some mystery lay beneath this information, he told no one, but started for Riggsville at once. The tide of emotion that had upset the even tenor of Uncle Jud's home life slowly ebbed away, and a keen sense of expectancy took its place.