Till, in a little lull of the fearful smart, as the air was shut away, and the oil felt momentarily cool upon the ache, Luke answered her,—­

“He hed I dare-hn’t, and ho I did!”

“You little fool!”

The rough word was half reaction of relief, that the child could speak at all, half horrible spasm of all her own motherly nerves that thrilled through and through with every pang that touched the little frame, hers also.  Mothers never do part bonds with babies they have borne.  Until the day they die, each quiver of their life goes back straight to the heart beside which it began.

“You Marcus!  What did you mean?”

“I meant she darsn’t; and she no business to ’a dars’t,” said Mark, pale with remorse and fright, but standing up stiff and manful, with bare common sense, when brought to bay.  And then he marched away into his mother’s bedroom, plunged his head down into the clothes, and cried,—­harder than Luclarion.

Nobody wore any new shoes that day; Mark for a punishment,—­though he flouted at the penalty as such, with an, “I guess you’d see me!” And there were many days before poor little Luclarion could wear any shoes at all.

The foot got well, however, without hindrance.  But Luke was the same little fool as ever; that was not burnt out.  She would never be “dared” to anything.

They called it “stumps” as they grew older.  They played “stumps” all through the barns and woods and meadows; over walls and rocks, and rafters and house-roofs.  But the burnt foot saved Luke’s neck scores of times, doubtless.  Mark remembered it; he never “stumped” her to any certain hurt, or where he could not lead the way himself.

The mischief they got into and out of is no part of my story; but one day something happened—­things do happen as far back in lives as that—­which gave Luclarion her clew to the world.

They had got into the best parlor,—­that sacred place of the New England farm-house, that is only entered by the high-priests themselves on solemn festivals, weddings and burials, Thanksgivings and quiltings; or devoutly, now and then to set the shrine in order, shut the blinds again, and so depart, leaving it to gather the gloom and grandeur that things and places and people do when they are good for nothing else.

The children had been left alone; for their mother had gone to a sewing society, and Grashy, the girl, was up-stairs in her kitchen-chamber-bedroom, with a nail over the door-latch to keep them out while she “fixed over” her best gown.

“Le’s play Lake Ontario,” says Marcus.

Now Lake Ontario, however they had pitched upon it, stood with them for all the waters that are upon the face of the earth, and all the confusion and peril of them.  To play it, they turned the room into one vast shipwreck, of upset and piled up chairs, stools, boxes, buckets, and what else they could lay hands on; and among and over them they navigated their difficult and hilarious way.  By no means were they to touch the floor; that was the Lake,—­that were to drown.