'Well,' continued he, 'I saw him playing with some very like them, to-day; and I have been told he was seen on the garden wall the very night Ella dreamt of the battle.'
Poor Willie! Poor Ella! They were quite astonished to hear such an explanation of the mystery, and rather sad. But their father, talking to them kindly and wisely, comforted them, and explained that nothing made by the hands of man can grow in the earth, but only things produced by Providence in the earth itself, from living seeds fallen from living plants. He led them into the garden and showed them the plants and the roots, and explained how from the living seeds spring up the living plants. He showed them, too, the dead trunks and dry branches, and explained how from them nothing could ever spring any more.
'Well, I'm glad I didn't kill the Russian,' confessed Willie. 'And it did seem all too easy as we had thought of it. I suppose the battle and all that was only a dream.'
'But I believed we were geniuses,' owned Ella, with a little blush; and then Father laughed. Oh, how he laughed!
THE GIANT OF THE TREASURE CAVES.
(Continued from page [115].)
CHAPTER VII.
Georgie listened to Estelle's reading till the low murmur, blending with the drowsy hum of the insects, the occasional twitter of a bird, and the warm fragrance of the pines, lulled him to sleep. Estelle read on till the story was finished; then sat gazing up into the green foliage above her. She was thinking that she was not unlike the girl in the story; her father was away, her mother was dead, and though she lived among those who loved her, would any such terrible things befall her as had happened to the heroine of the tale? Her thoughts wandered to the father in that far-off land, and the mother who had died when she was too young to remember her, but whose sweet face and sweeter memory would always be sacred to the little girl she had left behind her. She could almost hear herself say, as once in the days long, long ago—
'Do you like the name of Estelle, father? It sounds very French, but it was mother's.'