OSEPPIINE had stood in the doorway of the little cottage half a dozen times within the last hour peering anxiously down the road in search of Flutters, and now that she discovered him coming cross-cut through the meadow near which he had left the wagon, no one could have told how relieved she felt.

“Oh, Flutters, I’m so glad you’ve come!” she called softly, as soon as he came within speaking distance, and then immediately turned back into the room. Flutters followed her on tip-toe, for she had motioned him to come in quietly. “What is the matter?” he asked, going close to Bobbin’s cot.

“Oh, I don t know,” Josephine whispered, with tears of anxious sympathy filling her gray eyes; “we had had a lovely talk together, and then he asked me to read out of a book, your Prayer-Book, he said it was, and so I read ever so many psalms from the Psalter, till suddenly looking up I saw that he was in great pain, and when I spoke to him he seemed neither to see nor hear me. In a little while the pain passed over, and ever since he has lain there so still that I have had to put my ear down very close to make sure that he was breathing.”

“Dear old Bobbin,” said Flutters, stroking the thin gray hair. The well-known voice, or perhaps the gentle touch, seemed to rouse him, for he slowly opened his eyes and seeing Flutters, smiled.

“You’ll not try to keep me this time,” he said slowly, looking up at Flutters beseechingly, but in a voice too low and weak for even Josephine to hear.

“He said not to try to keep him this time,” Flutters explained, “but don’t you think I ought to go right away for a doctor?”

Bobbin moved his head entreatingly from side to side, so Josephine said: “Well, perhaps not yet, Flutters, he seems so much more comfortable now,” whereupon Bobbin looked the thanks he felt. After a while, when he had once again mustered strength, he said: “Flutters, the little book.”

Flutters, knowing well enough what he meant, took the Prayer-Book which had been soon restored to Bobbin after that night when he had first joyfully discovered it, and turning to the selections for the twenty-fifth day of the month began to read. Josephine drew a chair to the fireplace and sat listening, with her hands folded in her lap, while Bobbin never took his eyes from Flutters’s face, as he sat close beside him so that he might hear distinctly.

The little hut looked very cheery and cosey, converted as it had been into such a comfortable shelter, more comfortable indeed than Bobbin had ever known, and at a time, too, when a warm room and a quiet one meant more to him than it could have meant at anytime in all his life before. Bu............