The next moment she was conscious of her predicament. Flushed and panting, she stood and gazed, and recognised to her horror the Rector of the parish. She gave one glance around, to see if she was quite abandoned, and then, seeing no trace of her companions, she curtsied timidly, and stood her ground. ‘Little girl,’ said the Rector, in a terrible voice, ‘I don’t know you--what is your name?’ She hung her head awkwardly, and made no reply. ‘Do you hear me? What is your name?’ The little girl raised her head, looked straight at the Rector, and answered in a clear voice-- ‘If you please, sir, I’m Madlin--Mark Peartree’s girl.’ The Rector’s brows came down still more. ‘Mark Peartree; I think I know the man--he lives down at the ferry, and sails in a barge. Is he your father?’ The girl, who had a common straw hat swinging by the ribbon in her mouth, gnawed the ribbon, and replied shortly-- ‘No, he ain’t.’ ‘What is he, then?’ asked the Rector. ‘Some relation?’ ‘No,’ was the immediate reply. ‘I call him uncle, but he isn’t a _real_ uncle, nor Uncle Luke neither. I’m a foundling--Aunt Jane found me, out _there!_’ And with a back sweep of her hand, the little girl indicated the great marshes, steaming and reddening in the setting sun. ‘And whoever you are, are you not aware,’ said the Rector, improving the occasion, ‘that you are a very wicked little girl? Upon this holy day of all days in the year I find you practising a vicious pastime here, in God’s own acre! On a tombstone! Little girl, do you know that there is a dead fellow-creature lying under you, and that you are profaning his place of rest?’ The girl gave a start and a scared look downward, as if half expecting the dead man to arise and confront her; then half unconsciously she edged off the tombstone and stood ankle deep in the long churchyard grass. ‘I am afraid,’ said the Rector, shaking his forefinger at her. ‘I am really very much afraid that you have been very badly brought up. Tell me, have you ever heard the word of God? Do you ever go to church?’ The answer was at any rate prompt and explicit. ‘No--never.’ ‘Ah, I thought so. A sad case. And your father--I mean your adopted father--is he not ashamed of himself to bring you up in ignorance and sin?’ This was touching rather a dangerous chord. The little girl flushed, panted, opened her large blue eyes full on the minister and exclaimed-- ‘Uncle Mark isn’t ashamed of himself, no more is Uncle Luke! They go to their meeting, and I go too. They’re United Brethren, and when I grow up, _I’m_ to be a Brethren too!9 ‘Brethren!’