She had heard something!

Something that just at the right of the flock of sheep moved silently, something blacker than the darkness that enveloped it!

She thought of wild animals, of tramps, of everything natural that might invade a pasture; then as a sepulchral cry broke once more upon the air, she remembered all the tales she had ever heard of Things that visited one in the night.

“Judy Jameson, you know you don’t believe in ghosts,” she tried to reassure herself, “you know you don’t, Judy Jameson,” but all the same her heart went “thumpety-thump.”

She cowered back against the rock as a white figure appeared beside the black one, and the two bore down upon her.

There was a sudden bewildering chorus: 

“Caw—­caw—­caw—­”

“Purr—­rr—­meow—­”

And then Judy screamed, joyfully, “Oh, Belinda, Belinda, you precious pussy cat,” and in her relief she hugged the great white animal, as if she were not the same girl who, not many days before, had said, “I hate cats.”

Becky walked around in a circle and inspected Judy.

“So it was you, Becky, was it?” asked Judy, “that I saw first?  But what made you look so tall?”

She went to the place where she had first seen the apparition, and found the slender stump of a tree, on top of which Becky had been perched.

“What are you doing here, so far from home, Belinda,” asked Judy, as she sat down and took the purring, gentle creature in her lap.

But Belinda could not talk, although she patted Judy’s hand with her paw and curled down with her head in the crook of Judy’s arm.

“My, it’s good to have you here,” said Judy, “but I wonder how it happened.”

She gathered the big cat close to her, grateful for the warmth of the soft body, and with Becky perched up on a rock behind, she sat very still, comforted by the sound of Belinda’s sleepy song, and by Becky’s sentinel-like watchfulness.

It was in the black darkness that precedes the dawn that she was roused by a lantern flashing across her eyes.

“Grandfather,” she said, sleepily, as a haggard old face bent above her.  “Grandfather.”

“Judy,” he said, with a break in his voice.

Wide-awake now, she saw that his hands trembled so that he had to set the lantern down.

“Oh,” she said, remorsefully, as she sat up, “how tired you look, grandfather.”

“We have hunted for you all night,” he said, and the dim rays from the lantern showed the droop of his figure and the lines in his face.

“Oh, grandfather,” she said again, and clung to him, sobbing softly.

“Hush,” he said, holding her close.  “Hush, Judy.  You are all right now.”

“Oh, I am all right,” she sobbed, despairingly, “but it is you, grandfather, you are all tired out, and just because I was such—­such—­a silly goose—­”

“Never mind, never mind,” said the Judge, hastily, “I have found you now.”