"Yes, very good--better than yours. That is why I brought you here to-day--to refresh your memory." There was something of the old banter in her voice, and something in her expression, inscrutable though it was, that for some reason set his heart to beating. He wondered if she could be playing with him. He could not understand, and said as much. "You brought me here to tell me a story," he concluded. "Isn't that what you said? I shall miss the Lake Placid hack if we do not start back presently." Again that inscrutable, disturbing look. "Is it so necessary that you should start to-day?" she asked. "Mr. Meelie, I am sure, will appreciate your company just as much another time. And to-day is ours." That look--it kept him from saying something bitter then. "The story--you are forgetting it," he said, quietly. "No, I am not forgetting." The banter had all gone out of her voice, and it had become gentle--almost tender. A soft, far-away look had come into her eyes. "I am only trying to think how to tell it--how to begin. I thought perhaps you might help me--only you don't--your memory is so poor." He had no idea of her meaning now, and ventured no comment. "You do not help me," she went on. "I must tell my little story alone. After all, it is only a sequel--do you care for sequels?" There was something in her face just then that, had it not been for all that had come between them, might have made him take her in his arms. "I--I care for what you are about to tell," he said. She regarded him intently, and a great softness came into her eyes. "It is the sequel of a story we heard together," she began, "that day on McIntyre, in the hermit's cabin. You remember that he spoke of the other child--a little girl--hers. This is the story of that little girl. You have heard something of her already--how the brother toiled for her and his mother--how she did not fully understand the bitterness of it all. Yet she tried to help--a little. She thought of many things. She had dreams that grew out of the fairy book her mother used to read to her, and she looked for Aladdin caves among the hills, and sometimes fancied herself borne away by the wind and the sea to some far Eastern land where the people would lay their treasures at her feet. But more than all she waited for the wonderful fairy prince who would one day come to her with some magic talisman of fortune which would make them all rich, and happy ever after. "Yet, while she dreamed, she really tried to help in other ways--little ways of her own--and in the summer she picked berries and, standing where the stage went by, she held them out to the tourists who, when the stage halted, sometimes bought them for a few pennies. Oh, she was so glad when they bought them--the pennies were so precious--though it meant even more to her to be able to look for a moment into the faces of those strangers from another world, and to hear the very words that were spoken somewhere beyond the hills."