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Miss Chester was fortunate in gaining Father Abram for a friend and companion. He knew every road and peak and slope of the mountains near Lakelands. Through him she became acquainted with the solemn delight of the shadowy, tilted aisles of the pine forests, the dignity of the bare crags, the crystal, tonic mornings, the dreamy, golden afternoons full of mysterious sadness. So her health improved, and her spirits grew light. She had a laugh as genial and hearty in its feminine way as the famous laugh of Father Abram. Both of them were natural optimists; and both knew how to present a serene and cheerful face to the world.

One day Miss Chester learned from one of the guests the history of Father Abram’s lost child. Quickly she hurried away and found the miller seated on his favourite rustic bench near the chalybeate spring. He was surprised when his little friend slipped her hand into his, and looked at him with tears in her eyes.

“Oh, Father Abram,” she said, “I’m so sorry! I didn’t know until to-day about your little daughter. You will find her yet some day — Oh, I hope you will.”

The miller looked down at her with his strong, ready smile.

“Thank you, Miss Rose,” he said, in his usual cheery tones. “But I do not expect to find Aglaia. For a few years I hoped that she had been stolen by vagrants, and that she still lived; but I have lost that hope. I believe that she was drowned.”

“I can understand,” said Miss Chester, “how the doubt must have made it so hard to bear. And yet you are so cheerful and so ready to make other people’s burdens light. Good Father Abram!”

“Good Miss Rose!” mimicked the miller, smiling. “Who thinks of others more than you do?”

A whimsical mood seemed to strike Miss Chester.

“Oh, Father Abram,” she cried, “wouldn’t it be grand if I should prove to be your daughter? Wouldn’t it be romantic? And wouldn’t you like to have me for a daughter?”

“Indeed, I would,” said the miller, heartily. “If Aglaia had lived I could wish for nothing better than for her to have grown up to be just such a little woman as you are. Maybe you are Aglaia,” he continued, falling in with her playful mood; “can’t you remember when we lived at the mill?”

Miss Chester fell swiftly into serious meditation. Her large eyes were fixed vaguely upon something in the distance. Father Abram was amused at her quick return to seriousness. She sat thus for a long time before she spoke.

“No,” she said at length, with a long sigh, “I can’t remember anything at all about a mill. I don’t think that I ever saw a flour mill in my life until I saw your funny little church. And if I were your little girl I would remember it, wouldn’t I? I’m so sorry, Father Abram.”

“So am I,” said Father Abram, humouring her. “But if you cannot remember that you are my little girl, Miss Rose, surely you can recollect being some one else’s. You remember your own parents, of course.”

“Oh, yes; I remember them very well — especially my father. He wasn’t a bit like you, Father Abram. Oh, I was only making believe: Come, now, you’ve rested long enough. You promised to show me the pool where you can see the trout playing, this afternoon. I never saw a trout.”

Late one afternoon Father Abram set out for the old mill alone. He often went to sit and think of the old days when he lived in the cottage across the road. Time had smoothed away the sharpness of his grief until he no longer found the memory of those times painful. But whenever Abram Strong sat in the melancholy September afternoons on the spot where “Dums” used to run in every day with her yellow curls flying, the smile that Lakelands always saw upon his face was not there.