When the explanation was given Miss Bertram gave a little groan.

“If we are going to have these kind of expeditions, I really must insist upon your leaving off trying to do other people good.  Old Roger told me he found his donkey quite early in the afternoon.  Now come off to bed both of you.  I believe nurse is already getting her poultice ready in anticipation of a bad night, Jonathan!”

“What is Rob going to do?” Roy asked, shortly after, when he was comfortably tucked up in bed, and was enjoying a hot basin of bread and milk.  Miss Bertram had just come in to see how he was.

“Is that the lad that brought you back?  He is having a good supper in the kitchen, and then will go home, I suppose.”

“But he hasn’t any home,” said Roy, putting down his spoon and looking at his aunt with an anxious face; “he can’t get work, so his mother turned him out of doors, and I want him to come and live with us, and when I grow up he shall be my servant!”

Miss Bertram laughed.

“My dear boy, not quite so fast.  I shall not turn him out to-night, if he has no home to go to; but we cannot keep a lot of idle boys about the establishment.”

Roy’s brown eyes filled with tears.  It was so rarely that he showed his feelings that his aunt began to wonder whether he was not too weak and exhausted from his walk to be talked to.

“Don’t worry your little head over him,” she said, kindly; “go to sleep, and I’ll let you see him to-morrow morning.”

“Have you ever been lost, Aunt Judy?”

Roy was struggling for self-command, and his voice was very quiet.

“No, I’m thankful to say I never have.”

“I prayed to God,” he went on solemnly; “that He would send some one to show us the way home, and Rob was the answer.  And when he took me up on his shoulders and I knew he was taking me home, I thought of that picture over there!”

Roy pointed to a print of the Good Shepherd with the lost sheep across his shoulders, and Miss Bertram’s face softened as she stooped and kissed her little nephew.

“Good-night dear.  We will see what can be done.”

She left the room and when nurse came bustling up to see if the bread and milk had disappeared she found her little charge gazing dreamily in front of him.

“Come, dearie, eat your supper.  Don’t you feel easier?”

“I was thinking,” Roy said, slowly bringing back his gaze to the basin before him; “that if you’re very strong you miss a lot of comfort; and however big and strong I grow up to be, I hope I shan’t be too big and strong to be carried by Him!”

He pointed to the picture again, and good old nurse responded,

“If you outgrow the Lord, you’ll outgrow heaven!”

VI

ROB

Roy was not allowed to go to the Rectory the next morning as it was rather damp, and nurse was carefully trying to ward off a bronchial attack, but he was permitted to see Rob, and the latter came in looking rather sheepish and as if he did not know what to do with his hands and his feet.