"Hush-a-by, conscience, on the tree-top."
When morning came three miserable-looking objects dragged themselves up to the gate of the old boarding-house. But who was that walking up and down the piazza at such a troubled pace?
Nobody less than Ned, who was fretting himself half crazy waiting for the party who had arranged to go in search of three lost boys. Ned had been more fortunate than they, for after the wash-out, which had separated him from his companions, he had happily strayed into the very path which led home.
Presently Mrs. Hartshorn came out, but after one good look at the party she apparently concluded that they needed no word of reproof from her. Conscience had evidently preached every effective sermon, for which the experience of the past thirty-six hours had supplied a powerful text.
[THE DAISY TRAIL.]
You'd think such a small boy would not know
How to get back if he should go
Without his mother so far away
Beyond the garden fence to play.
But he lays a trail of daisies white,
That gleam in the grass like stars at night;
So running home he can never stray,
With the scattered daisies to show the way.
