THINGS happened very fast the next few days. “Something doing every minute,” Billy put it. Billy had neither been ill nor injured,—only . The wound on his scalp had been worse in appearance than in fact; and a couple of long nights in sleep, and easy days at home mended him completely.  
Was not May Nell safe? Almost recovered from her fright and hours of ? Was not the town ringing with her courage and sayings? For she had told her story more than once; and when she came to the place where she said, “And I thought, ‘God can see me all the time; if He means for me to suffer I must have an awful lot of courage; I must ask Him for it.’ So I did, and I said ‘Now I lay me,’ and lay down on the bed so I could hear God speak—you know you can hear better lying down—and I waited—”
 
When she came to this point all her listeners looked for their handkerchiefs. And May Nell stopped suddenly, smiled, and finished, “And God heard me; and Billy rescued me.”
 
May Nell was not taken to her father; he came to her. Edith’s pictures of the little girl fulfilled their mission; they met him as soon as he landed from South America. He had been a busy man during those few days; had found not only his child but his wife, ill in a country sanitarium; where, for weeks after the earthquake and fire had, she supposed, swallowed her little daughter, she lingered, praying only to die. Now with husband and child both saved to her, she was fast growing well; needed only their presence to complete her recovery.
 
It was on the first of these busy days in San Francisco that the big saw at a distance May Nell’s father; saw the child’s pictures posted in the galleries, hurried back to the “Ha’nt,” and planned the kidnapping as a chance for “getting even” with Mr. Smith, who had discharged him years before for dishonesty. But Billy had him, brought him safely to justice for all of his crimes.
 
“I always knew that house had something to do with me,” Billy declared to Mr. Smith. “The kids call it a wicked house, but it’s only the people living in it that’s wicked. It’s a splendid old place; and when I’m a man and have money enough, I’m going to buy it and fix it up fine, and give it a fair chance.”
 
Friday came; and May Nell delighted her father with her part in the exercises. Billy was very proud of her as she stood on the platform, lovely in her white frock and her fair, curling hair, reciting her “piece.”
 
“She’s the swellest looking one in the whole school,” he whispered to his smiling mother.
 
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