Then he remembered that his friends had more than once said the same thing in his presence, and Jenny seemed to be standing on the opposite side of the carved cot, and whispering, ‘As you killed me! as you killed me!’ and he laid little Wally hastily down again. ‘Dada’s boy will go to sleep now,’ he said to him, with a kiss. But Master Wally liked better lying in his father’s arms, and was quite cunning enough to know how to get his own way. ‘No; Wally wants dada,’ he replied fretfully, and but half-awake. ‘Wicked peoples come out of corners and frighten poor Wally.’ ‘Wicked peoples! What do you mean, Wally?’ demanded Hindes, the perspiration breaking out immediately upon his face with apprehension. ‘There is no one here to frighten my Wally! Only Elsie and Laurie sleeping like good little girls in their beds, and nursie in the next room, with the door wide open.’ ‘Oh, yes; there is,’ replied the little boy, oracularly; ‘peoples with black faces and white faces, and ladies with ribbons--’ ‘Good God!’ exclaimed his father, with unnecessary fervour, ‘_what_ ladies, Wally? Not a pretty lady, with curling hair--’ ‘Oh, yes,’ cried the child, delighted to have found a theme to build his fables on; a ‘boo-ful young lady with long hair, just like Jenny that used to love me and bring me sugar plums. Dada, where is my Jenny? She hasn’t been to see Wally for a long, long time.’ So he was babbling on in his childish ignorance and cunning combined, when Hindes suddenly left his side and called the nurse from the adjoining room. ‘Rosa, you must get up and attend to Master Wally. He is very restless to-night, and cannot sleep. Come at once.’ And then, with a hasty kiss to the child, he said, ‘Nurse is coming, darling. She will stay with you. Dada must go now,’ and bolted from the nursery. Was it possible that Jenny had appeared to the boy? Would her coming portend good or evil? Surely she could never have the heart to harm the little child, on whom all his hopes were set. ‘As you harmed me! as you harmed me!’ he seemed to hear whispered through the darkness. Had the man been in his sober senses, he would have recalled how many times Master Wally had invented the most marvellous stories of things which he declared he had heard and seen, in order to detain his parents by his side--things which, they both knew, existed only in their little son’s imagination. But to-night the childish fibs assumed gigantic proportions in the eyes of his craven-hearted father. He lay in his own bed trembling, as he recalled how fond Jenny had always seemed of Wally above the other children--how often she spent her money on toys for him--and how eagerly the little fellow used to welcome her appearance. Was it true she had visited his bedside, and had she come in love or anger?