Audrey looked at her father through tear-filled eyes, her lips were quivering. "Oh father, father, I want to—but I don't know how."
"There is only one way, dear. By constant striving against our failing, and by constant prayer. We cannot succeed by ourselves, we should only meet with certain failure. But if we place our hand in God's hand we know that though we may stumble and totter many times, we cannot fail entirely."
A few minutes later she was kneeling beside Debby, where she still lay sobbing heartbrokenly.
"Debby dear, I have picked some heath and some dear little ferns. If Keith will help me, we will make such a pretty grave for poor little Rudolph, up here on the moor. Would you like that?"
For a moment Debby looked at her in speechless surprise. "Could it be cross Audrey speaking so gently?" Then her arms were flung out and around her eldest sister's neck, "Oh, Audrey," she cried, "oh Audrey, I am so glad you care too. Though he wasn't—very pretty, he was such a darling, and I do, I want everyone to feel sorry that he is dead—but I thought you didn't."
And Audrey returned the embrace. "I do Debby dear, I do. I can't tell you how dreadfully sorry I am."
When, an hour later, the whole party turned their faces homeward, one of Debby's hands was clasped in Audrey's, the other in Keith's. Audrey carried the sleeping Snowdrop and Keith the sleeping Nigger; while up on the now desolate looking moorland, little Rudolph lay sleeping in the soft brown earth beneath a clump of waving bracken. So short a life his had been, so tragic and swift an end, but the hand-clasp of the sisters showed that his little life had not been lived in vain.
CHAPTER X.
A few days later Mr. Carlyle was upon the moor again, but this time everything was very different. There was no happy party, no picnic, no sunshine nor soft breeze.