Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/214

204 "Love me, I hope," said Jim, "as well as she does now. She 's all I 've got in the world, Dr. Miller, and please don't laugh at me any more. You would n't if you knew how I love that child, would he, Will?" "No," said I, pretending to laugh. "It 's no laughing matter, Doctor."

But the words, "She 's all I have got in this world," echoed strangely in my ears. Dear, generous Jim; how little our boys' hearts could have dreamed in that hour of the barrier into which those few words were destined to be built!

We searched long around the roots of the old tree. I think Dr. Miller was determined to falsify Ally's prediction by finding the stones there.

"That one stone could n't have been all alone," he said. "There 's no such thing in nature; there must be more where that came from."

"But, Dr. Miller," said I, "that one was in a crevice of the roots; it probably came from deep down in the earth," and I showed him, as nearly as I could recollect, where the stone had lain. He examined the earth on the roots very carefully, and we looked for the cavity from which the tree had come, but there was no trace of it. Probably many years had elapsed since the storm which uprooted the old oak. "It might have grown a long way farther up the hill for all we can tell," said the Doctor, scratching his head and looking puzzled.

At this instant we heard loud shouts from Jim