“Which is the best place for you at present, my dear boy.”

“I made up my mind,” cried the little fellow, “that I would stand it till you came home.  I said to myself, I won’t frighten mother and the girls.  But now, father,” he cried, half jumping out of bed, “it’s not illness:  it’s a secret.”

His eyes shone so wildly, his face was so swept with strong feeling, that my heart sank within me.  It could be nothing but fever that did it, and fever had been so fatal.  I got him into my arms to put him back into bed.  “Roland,” I said, humoring the poor child, which I knew was the only way, “if you are going to tell me this secret to do any good, you know you must be quite quiet, and not excite yourself.  If you excite yourself, I must not let you speak.”

“Yes, father,” said the boy.  He was quiet directly, like a man, as if he quite understood.  When I had laid him back on his pillow, he looked up at me with that grateful, sweet look with which children, when they are ill, break one’s heart, the water coming into his eyes in his weakness.  “I was sure as soon as you were here you would know what to do,” he said.

“To be sure, my boy.  Now keep quiet, and tell it all out like a man.”  To think I was telling lies to my own child! for I did it only to humor him, thinking, poor little fellow, his brain was wrong.

“Yes, father.  Father, there is some one in the park—­some one that has been badly used.”  “Hush, my dear; you remember there is to be no excitement.  Well, who is this somebody, and who has been ill-using him?  We will soon put a stop to that.”

“All,” cried Roland, “but it is not so easy as you think.  I don’t know who it is.  It is just a cry.  Oh, if you could hear it!  It gets into my head in my sleep.  I heard it as clear—­as clear; and they think that I am dreaming, or raving perhaps,” the boy said, with a sort of disdainful smile.

This look of his perplexed me; it was less like fever than I thought.  “Are you quite sure you have not dreamed it, Roland?” I said.

“Dreamed?—­that!” He was springing up again when he suddenly bethought himself, and lay down flat, with the same sort of smile on his face.  “The pony heard it, too,” he said.  “She jumped as if she had been shot.  If I had not grasped at the reins—­for I was frightened, father—­”

“No shame to you, my boy,” said I, though I scarcely knew why.

“If I hadn’t held to her like a leech, she’d have pitched me over her head, and never drew breath till we were at the door.  Did the pony dream it?” he said, with a soft disdain, yet indulgence for my foolishness.  Then he added slowly, “It was only a cry the first time, and all the time before you went away.  I wouldn’t tell you, for it was so wretched to be frightened.  I thought it might be a hare or a rabbit snared, and I went in the morning and looked; but there was nothing.  It was after you went I heard it really first; and this is what he says.”  He raised himself on his elbow close to me, and looked me in the face:  “’Oh, mother, let me in! oh, mother, let me in!’” As he said the words a mist came over his face, the mouth quivered, the soft features all melted and changed, and when he had ended these pitiful words, dissolved in a shower of heavy tears.