It was nearly midnight when the door from the Colonel's room was
noiselessly opened.

The old man stirred the fire gently until it burst into a bright flame.
Then he turned to the bed. "You rascal!" he whispered, looking at Fritz,
who raised his head quickly with a threatening look in his wicked eyes.

Lloyd lay with one hand stretched out, holding the dog's protecting paw.
The other held something against her tear-stained cheek.

"What under the sun!" he thought, as he drew it gently from her fingers.
The little glove lay across his hand, slim and aristocratic-looking. He
knew instinctively whose it was. "Poor little thing's been crying," he
thought. "She wants Elizabeth. And so do I! And so do I!" his heart
cried out with bitter longing. "It's never been like home since she
left."

He laid the glove back on her pillow, and went to his room.

"If Jack Sherman should die," he said to himself many times that night,
"then she would come home again. Oh, little daughter, little daughter!
why did you ever leave me?"




CHAPTER VIII.


The first thing that greeted the Little Colonel's eyes when she opened