“It’d have been better for you if you hadn’t seen it, but had gone on till you came to the vicarage.”

“I don’t think so,” said Huldah, emphatically.  “P’raps the servants would have driven us off,—­anyway, they couldn’t have been kinder than you was—­”

“It wouldn’t have been better for me if you’d gone on,” added Mrs. Perry, gratefully.  “I shouldn’t have had any hens now, if it hadn’t been for you, and I’d have been scared to death.  I think I will go up to bed now,” she added presently, in a weary voice.  “I had thought I wouldn’t go back again, but I am that tired.”

“You do look tired,” rejoined Huldah, sympathetically.  Her own little body was aching all over, and she was so weary she could gladly have lain down anywhere and slept, but it never occurred to her to mention the fact.  “Dick’ll mind the garden, so don’t you worry about that.”

“Can you sleep on the sofa, do you think?”

“Oh yes, ma’am!” cried Huldah, rapturously, gazing at the hard black horse-hair covered thing as though it were the most luxurious couch in the world.

“I’ll give you my big shawl, to wrap yourself up in, and you can use that cushion there for a pillow.”

“Thank you, ma’am; but I think,” she added, anxiously, “I’ll run out first, and see that Dick’s all right.  You can bolt the door after me while I’m out.”

Martha Perry did not do that, though.  She stood there with the open door in her hand, and watched almost affectionately the little brown figure run down the garden path, and disappear in the gloom.

“Put Dick in the barn to sleep,” she called after Huldah.  “He’ll be nice and comfortable there;” but Dick, wise dog, was already there, snugly curled up in the straw, and as happy as a dog could be.  The hens, too, had settled down to sleep again in their house, and all was safe, so Huldah ran back again contentedly; and Martha Perry welcomed her as gladly as though they were old friends, and when she shut the door and bolted themselves in, it was with a sigh of relief that she had this little companion.

A few minutes later the old woman was stretched out comfortably in her bed, and the child was rolled up snugly on the hard sofa, and silence once more fell on cottage and garden, broken only by an occasional sleepy cluck, cluck of the hens, as they moved on their perches, or a whimper from Dick, as in his dreams he lived over again his rout of the enemy.

Huldah did not dream of thieves, or hens, or anything else.  She just slept, and slept, a heavy, dreamless sleep, unconscious of everything.  The hard sofa galled her poor, thin, aching body, the round hard pillow gave her a crick in the neck, but neither of them could make themselves felt through the sleep which held her fast in merciful unconsciousness.