her eyes rest upon the two when they were frolicking together, with an expression of pain. The day came when I understood what that pain had meant.
Long before spring we had ceased to talk about going to Black Ledge to look for the magic stones, but Ally never forgot it. One bright day in April, when the drops falling from the eaves had melted a little circle around the roots of the lilac-tree, and brought to light a few tiny pale green shoots of grass, Ally turned from the window, and said to me:—
"Mr. Will, see, there is the ground again! Pretty soon the snow will be gone, and we can look for Stonie's friends. Poor Stonie! he would have been very lonely all winter if it had n't been for me. We 'll take him up with us, and he will show us the way."
"But, Ally, how can a stone show people the way? That 's a silly speech, little girl," said I.
"No, Mr. Will," she answered gravely. "It is n't silly, because it is true. Stonie won't show you, because he don't know you; but he will show me. He tells me a great many things when we are all alone together, don't you, Stonie?" And she took the little blue silk bag from her pocket and laid it against her cheek. As she did so her eyes dilated and her cheeks flushed, and again the uncomfortable sense of something supernatural in the stone, and in the bond between Ally and it, swept over me. "Who knows but Jim is right, after all! I
