thanksgiving, in endless love and praise,--a welcome to Rosin the
Beau!

* * * * *

An hour later Mrs. Brown stood before her employer, flushed and
disordered, making her defence.

"I couldn't have helped it, not if I had died for it, Mr. Anderson.
You couldn't have helped it yourself, if you had been there. When she
heard that fiddle, the child dropped on her knees as if she had been
shot, and I thought she was going to faint. But the next minute she
was at the window, and such a cry as she gave! the sound of it is in
my bones yet, and will be till I die."

She paused, and wiped her fiery face, for she had run bareheaded
through the blazing streets.

"Then he came in,--the old man. He was plain dressed, but he came in
like a king to his throne; and the child drifted into his arms like a
flake of snow, and there she lay. Mr. Anderson, when he held her there
on his breast, and turned and looked at me, with his eyes like two
black coals, all power was taken from me, and I couldn't have moved if
it had been to save my own life. He pointed at me with his fiddle-bow,
but it might have been a sword for all the difference I knew; anyway,
his voice went through and through me like something sharp and bright.
'You cannot move,' he said; 'you have no power to move hand or foot
till I have taken my child away. I bid you be still!' Mr. Anderson,
sir, I _had_ no power! I stood still, and they went away. They seemed
to melt away together,--he with his arm round her waist, holding her