After he had passed by, the three little girls looked at each other.

“Oh!” cried Rosamond, “did you see his hat and feather?”

“And his lace Vandyke, and the fluffy white dog!” cried Barbara.  But Margary said nothing.  In her heart, she thought she had never seen any one so lovely.

Then she went on to the well with her pitcher, and Rosamond and Barbara went home, telling every one they met about the beautiful little stranger.

[Illustration:  THE LITTLE STRANGER.]

Margary, after she had filled her pitcher, went home also; and was beginning to talk about the stranger to her mother, when a shadow fell across the floor from the doorway.  Margary looked up.  “There he is now!” cried she in a joyful whisper.

The pretty boy stood there indeed, looking in modestly and wishfully.  Margary’s mother arose at once from her spinning-wheel, and came forward; she was a very courteous woman.  “Wilt thou enter, and rest thyself,” said she, “and have a cup of our porridge, and a slice of our wheaten bread, and a bit of honeycomb?”

The little boy sniffed hungrily at the porridge which was just beginning to boil; he hesitated a moment, but finally thanked the good woman very softly and sweetly and entered.

Then Margary and her mother set a bottle of cowslip wine on the table, slices of wheaten bread, and a plate of honeycomb, a bowl of ripe raspberries, and a little jug of yellow cream, and another little bowl with a garland of roses around the rim, for the porridge.  Just as soon as that was cooked, the stranger sat down, and ate a supper fit for a prince.  Margary and her mother half supposed he was one; he had such a courtly, yet modest air.

When he had eaten his fill, and his little dog had been fed too, he offered his entertainers some gold out of a little silk purse, but they would not take it.

So he took hold of his dog’s ribbon, and went away with many thanks.  “We shall never see him again,” said Margary sorrowfully.

“The memory of a stranger one has fed, is a pleasant one,” said her mother.

“I am glad the lark sang so beautifully all the while he was eating,” said Margary.

While they were eating their own supper, the oldest woman in the village came in.  She was one hundred and twenty years old, and, by reason of her great age, was considered very wise.

“Have you seen the stranger?” asked she in her piping voice, seating herself stiffly.

“Yes,” replied Margary’s mother.  “He hath supped with us.”

The oldest woman twinkled her eyes behind her iron-bowed spectacles.  “Lawks!” said she.  But she did not wish to appear surprised, so she went on to say she had met him on the way, and knew who he was.

“He’s a Lindsay,” said the oldest woman, with a nod of her white-capped head.  “I tried him wi’ a buttercup.  I held it under his chin, and he loves butter.  So he’s a Lindsay; all the Lindsays love butter.  I know, for I was nurse in the family a hundred years ago.”