"I don't know where to look for him!" Evadne cried disconsolately.
Pompey laid aside his curry-comb and brush and folded his toil-worn hands.
"Lord Jesus," he said quietly, "here is thy little lamb. She's out in de dark mountain, an' she's lonesum an' hungry, an' de col' rain of sorrow is beatin' on her head. Lord, thou is de good Shepherd. Let her hear thy voice a callin' her. Carry this little lamb in thy bosom an' giv her de joy of thy love."
* * * * *
Judge Hildreth sat in his library far into the night. He was reading for the twentieth time the letter which Evadne had placed in his hands the morning after her arrival, and as he read, he frowned.
"It is ridiculous, absurd!" he exclaimed impatiently. "Just of a piece with all of Len's quixotic theories. By what possible chance could a child of that age know how to manage money? She would make ducks and drakes of the whole business in less than a year!"
A letter addressed to Evadne lay upon the pile of age-worn papers in an open drawer at his side.
"I enclose herewith a letter to Evadne," his brother had written, "giving full and minute explanations as to her best course in the matter. These she will follow implicitly, under your supervision, and I feel confident the result will be a well-developed character along the lines on which women, through no fault of their own, are so lamentably deficient, namely, the proper conduct of business and management of money."
Judge Hildreth looked again at the envelope with its clear, bold address. "That is not the handwriting of a fool," he muttered. "I wish I could make up my mind what to do."
Through the solemn hush of midnight his good and evil angels contended for his soul. In a strange silence he listened to their voices, the one insidious, tempting, the other urging him to take the upright course. Had his eyes not been holden he would have seen them, the one dark-browed, malignant, clothed in shadows, the other robed in light; while other angels hovered near and looked on pityingly. The white-robed angel spoke first.