“I’m expecting him every day,” said Milly with a cheerful little nod.  “I was telling God about him last night at my window on the stairs—­and it seemed as if God said to me that he was coming very soon now.  I shouldn’t wonder if he came next week!”

The keeper entered the cottage at this moment, and Milly jumped off her seat at once.

“I’m afraid it’s time for me to be going back.  Nurse said I was to be in at four.  Are you going to take me, Maxwell?”

“Don’t I always see you safe and sound up at the house?” Maxwell said good-humoredly, “and do you know it has struck four ten minutes ago?  When you and my old woman get together to have a crack, as the saying is, you don’t know how time passes.  We shall have to run for it.”

Milly was being rapidly covered up in a thick plaid by Mrs. Maxwell.

“There now, my dearie, good-bye till next I see you, and don’t be doleful in that big house by yourself.  Your uncle will soon be well, and nurse will be better able to see after you.  I don’t know what all those servants are after that they can’t amuse you a bit.”

“Nurse doesn’t like me ever to go near the servants’ hall,” said Milly; “I promised her I wouldn’t.  Sarah stays in the nursery with me, but she runs away downstairs pretty often.  Good-bye, Mrs. Maxwell.”

It was getting dark.  Maxwell soon had the child in his strong arms, and was striding along at a great pace, when passing a rather dark corner, a man suddenly sprang out of the bushes and took to his heels.

Maxwell shouted out wrathfully:  “Let me see you in here again, and it will be the worse for you, you scoundrel!”

“Oh, Maxwell,” cried Milly, “who is it?”

“One of them skulking poachers—­they’re always in here after the rabbits.  If I hadn’t a-had you to look after and had my thick stick I would a-been after him.”

“But you wouldn’t have hurt him?”

“I should have taught him a lesson, that I should!”

“But, Maxwell, you mustn’t, really!  Only think, he might be—­Tommy coming home!  You couldn’t see who it was, could you?  It would be dreadful if you chased away Tommy.”

“No fear o’ that,” Maxwell said in a quieter tone.  “My own son wouldn’t skulk along like that.  He was a ragged vagabond, that’s what he was.”

“Prodigal sons are nearly always ragged.  He might have been some one’s prodigal son, Maxwell.”

“He was just a poacher, my dear, and I think I know the chap.  He’s staying at the Blue Dragon, and has been a-watching this place for some time.”

“Perhaps he is one of God’s prodigal sons,” said Milly softly, “like Jack was.”

To this Maxwell made no reply, but when he set her down in the brightly-lighted hall a little later, he said,—­

“Don’t you fret about our Tommy.  I should know him fast enough.  He wouldn’t run from his own father.”

And Milly went in, and that night added another petition to her prayers:—­