“I don’t know.  There, pet, there!  Hus-h!” As she spoke, Dora carefully withdrew her arm from under the little head, where, in the August night, the hair clung in moist golden spirals, and a soft dew stood upon the white forehead.

“I’ll stay and fan her for a while longer, she looks so warm,” whispered Dora.

“No, no! come down and eat your supper, and help clear away.  Charley asked Mr. Burroughs to stay all night, and I guess he will.  Isn’t he real splendid?  Come down, and talk about him.”

Sunshine slept soundly; and Dora, half reluctantly, suffered herself to be led away by her cousin, closing the door softly behind her, and leaving the little child to dreams of a home so far away, and yet so near; of a vanished past, that, even in this moment, stretched a detaining hand from out the darkness, groping for her own; of human love immortal as heaven, and yet, for the moment, less trustworthy than the instinct of the brutes:  for if Mr. Thomas Burroughs, instead of being a highly cultivated and intellectual man, had been a dog of only average intelligence, ’Toinette Legrange would already have been discovered and, before another sunset, the slow agony devouring her mother’s heart would have been relieved.

But to each of us our gifts; and Mr. Burroughs, never suspecting how deficient were his own, strolled with his host beneath the trees, until the appearance of the young ladies upon the porch; when he joined them, and resumed his conversation with Dora.  From army matters, the talk soon wandered to the new prospects of Col.  Blank’s heiress; and Mr. Burroughs found himself first amused, then animated and interested, quite beyond his wont, in the young girl’s plans and expectations.

It was late when the party separated; and as the guest closed the door of the rosy-room, and cast an admiring glance over its neat appointments, he muttered to himself,—­

“What a bright, fresh little room! and what a brighter, fresher little girl!-as different from thy city friends, Tom Burroughs, as the cream she pours is from the chalky composition of the hotels.  Thou dost half persuade me to turn Hoosier, and help thee convert the wilderness to a blooming garden, O darlingest of Darlings!”

And as the young man, with a half-smile upon his lips, set sail for the vague and beautiful shores of Dreamland, a bright, sweet face lighted by two earnest eyes, seemed to herald him the way, and join itself to all his fairest fancies.

CHAPTER XXVI.

Mrs. Ginniss has A visitor.

Heavily went the days in the lowly home of Mrs. Ginniss and her son.  Teddy sought early and late for employment, disdaining nothing, however humble, whereby he might earn a few cents, and working as diligently at street-sweeping, dust-gathering, errand-running, or horse-holding, as he had ever done in the way of gaining an education under the kind tuition of his late master.