This was when he left the quarantined house; but when he sought it, he might be seen to stop at one gate and another, picking up here a jar, there a bowl, here again a paper bag; till by the time he reached the Laxen gate he stood out all over with packages like a summer Santa Claus. "There ain't anybody goin' to starve round here, if they _have_ got the smallpox!" was the general verdict, voiced by James Gregory, and when he added, for the benefit of the mill-yard, that he had heard Mr. Gordon order ice-cream, oranges, and oysters, all at once, for Lena, a growl of pleasure went round, which deepened into a hearty "What's the matter with the Old Man? _he's_ all right!" At length, one happy day, Mary Denison met Mr. Gordon at the Laxens' gate, and heard the good news that Lena was sitting up; that in a day or two now the quarantine would be taken off, the house disinfected, and Lena back in her place at the mill. The manager looked with satisfaction at Mary's beaming face of happiness; then, as she was turning away to spread the good tidings, he said: "Wait a moment, Mary! I have some other news for you. Have you forgotten the brooch that you found in the Blue Egyptians?" The color rushed to Mary's face, and Mr. Gordon had his answer. "Because," he added, "I have not forgotten, though you might well think I had done so. All this sad business has delayed matters, but now I have it all arranged. I am ready to-day, Mary, to give you either the brooch itself, or--what I think will be better--five hundred dollars, the sum I find it to be worth. Yes, my child, I am speaking the truth! The stones are fine ones, and the Boston jeweller offers you that sum for them. Well, Mary, have you nothing to say? What, crying? this will never do!" But Mary had nothing to say, and she was crying, because she could not help it. Presently she managed to murmur something about "Too much! too great kindness--not fair for her to have it all!" but Mr. Gordon cut her short. "Certainly you are to have it all, every penny of it! Finding's having! that is paper-mill law; ask James Gregory if it is not! There comes James this moment; go and tell him of your good fortune, and let him bring you up to my house this evening to get the money. "But, Mary,"--he glanced at a letter in his hand, and his face, which had been bright with kindness and pleasure, grew very grave,--"there is something else for you to tell James, and all the hands. James Hitchcock died yesterday, of malignant smallpox!" [Footnote 1: The main incidents in this story are founded on fact.] LITTLE BENJAMIN "Then is little Benjamin their ruler." "I THINK the kitty wants to come in," said Mother Golden. "I hear him crying somewhere. Won't you go and let him in, Adam?"