WHAT ROVER FOUND



                       CHAPTER II

                     WHAT ROVER FOUND

  UNMINDFUL of the sleet beating upon his uncovered head Ftugh
hastened to the spot, where the noble brute was licking a face,
a baby face, which he had ferreted out from beneath the shawl
wrapped so carefully around it to shield it from the cold, for
instead of one there were two in that rift of snow-a mother
and her child! That stiffened form lying there so still, hug-
ging that sleeping child so closely to its bosom, was no delusion,
and his mother's voice calling to know what he was doing
brought Hugh back at last to a consciousness that he must act,
and that immediately.
  "Mother," he screamed, "send a servant here, quick! or let
Ad come herself. There's a woman dead, I fear. I can carry
her, but the child, Ad must come for her."
  " The what " gasped Mrs. Worthington, who, terrified beyond
measure at the mention of a dead woman, was doubly so at
hearing of a child. "A child," she repeated, "whose child"
  Hugh made no reply save an order that the lounge should be
brought near the fire and a pillow from his mother's bed. " From
mine, then," he added, as he saw the anxious look in his mother's
face, and guessed that she shrank from having her own snowy
pillow come in contact with the wet, limp figure he was de-
positing upon the lounge. It was a slight, girlish form, and the
long brown hair, loosened from its confinement, fell in rich
profusion over the pillow which Uina brought half reluctantly,
eying askance the insensible object before her, and daintily hold-
ing back her dress lest it should come in contact with the child
her mother had deposited upon the floor, where it lay crying
lustily.
  The idea of a strange woman being thrust upon them in this
way was highly displeasing to Miss 'Lina, who haughtily drew
back from the little one when it stretched its arms out toward
her, while its pretty lip quivered and the tears dropped over its
rounded cheek.
  Meantime Hugh, with all a woman's tenderness, had done
for the now reviving stranger what he could, and as his mother
began to collect her scattered senses and evince some interest
in the matter, he withdrew to call the negroes, judging it pru-



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