Max sat gazing abstractedly from a window, his eyes showing traces of tears.

Turning his head as the captain entered, he started up with a joyful but subdued cry, “Papa!” then threw himself with bitter sobbing into the arms outstretched to receive him.

“My boy, my dear boy!” the captain said, in moved tones.  “What is this dreadful thing that has happened?  Can you tell me how your baby sister came to get so sad a fall?”

“I didn’t see it, papa:  I was out riding at the time.”

“But you have heard about it from those who did see it?”

“Yes, sir,” the lad answered reluctantly; “but—­please, papa, don’t ask me what they said.”

“Was Lulu at home at the time?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Would she be able to tell me all about it, do you think?”

“I haven’t seen her, papa, since I came in,” Max answered evasively.

The captain sighed.  His suspicions had deepened to almost certainty.

“Where is she?” he asked, releasing Max from his embrace, and turning to leave the room.

“I do not know, papa,” answered Max.

“Where was the baby when she fell? can you tell me that?” asked his father.

“On the veranda, sir:  so the servants told me.”

“Which of them saw it?”

“Aunt Dinah, Agnes, Aunt Dicey,—­nearly all the women, I believe, sir.”

The captain mused a moment.

“Was Lulu there?” he asked.

“Yes, sir; and papa,—­if you must know just how it happened,—­I think she could tell you all about it as well as anybody else, or maybe better.  And you know she always speaks the truth.”

“Yes,” the captain said, as if considering the suggestion:  “however, I prefer to hear the story first from some one else.”

He passed on through the upper hall and down the stairs, then on out to the veranda, where he found a group of servants—­of whom Aunt Dicey was one—­excitedly discussing the very occurrence he wished to inquire about.

They did not share the reluctance of Violet and Max, but answered his questions promptly, with a very full and detailed account of the affair.

They gave a graphic description of the rage Lulu was thrown into at the sight of Rosie galloping away on the pony she had expected to ride, repeated her angry retort in reply to Aunt Dinah’s reproof, and told, without any extenuation of the hard facts, how the baby girl, escaping from her nurse’s watchful care for a moment, had toddled along to her sister, caught at her skirts for support, and received a savage kick, that sent her down the steps to the gravel-walk below.

The captain heard the story with ever increasing, burning indignation.  Lulu’s act seemed the very wantonness of cruelty,—­a most cowardly attack of a big, strong girl upon a tiny, helpless creature, who had an indisputable claim upon her tenderest protecting care.