Mrs. Dorothy could not even see the sunset; the Minster towered between her and the red-gold west. Poor little Mistress Dorothy! and yet she looked so happy, so cordial and contented. By-and-by she began to ask me questions about home. The Professor had gone back to his study, and Master Caleb stood in the window opposite her chair. 'Have you got a father and mother?' 'No; he has lost his mother,' Master Caleb answered for me; and then rather abruptly he began to tell her about my mother's life and death. He told it in beautiful words, that made me listen as if it were a story about some one I had never known. Mistress Dorothy clasped my hand closer in her own as he went on, and looked down to hide, I think, the tears that were in her eyes. 'And so she died,' ended Master Caleb, 'and the boy was left to grow up as best he could.' There was something in his voice that made me look up at him--something I could not understand. Mistress Dorothy must have known better what he meant, for she answered softly-- 'And yet it was best so.' Master Caleb bowed his head gravely. 'No doubt you are right, Mistress Dorothy. Only it has often struck me as a strange answer to the promise that whoever gives a cup of water shall in no wise lose his reward. The boy did his best, and where is his reward?' 'We do not know yet,' she said, 'but it will surely come. Master Caleb, you are a schoolmaster; do you always give your best rewards in schooltime? Don't you often keep them to the end, when your scholars are leaving school to go home? Perhaps Willie will wait for his reward even until then.' 'You are speaking of the next world, Mistress Dorothy,' he said. 'Yes,' and she turned to me. 'You will be content to wait, Willie?' I answered 'Yes' then, because I thought she expected it of me. With my whole heart I say it now. * * * * * 'Well, Willie,' said Master Caleb, when he had walked a long way on the road home without saying a word, 'so you have seen him.' 'Yes, sir; it was very surprising to hear him talk.' 'Ah! he's a wonderful man.' He spoke as if he scarcely knew what he was saying; and then, waking up again, 'a very wonderful man.' 'And oh! sir! don't you like Mistress Dorothy?' 'Like Mistress Dorothy--I should never think of such a thing--don't talk of it--like her, no.' 'Oh, I thought you did.' 'I am surprised at you, Willie,' he said, and would not talk any more; so we went home silently, through sunset and twilight and moonshine. I went a long way across the hills next day, in search of a certain fern that only grew in one place. It was a very rare one, Master Caleb had told me, a soft feathery thing, that I fancied might please Mistress Dorothy. I carried it home and waited anxiously, hoping that Master Caleb would take me with him again to Morechester. But he went alone, and Mrs. Janet said she could not think what ailed him that he was always on the tramp.