across, Uncle Jem—I mean Blossom. But I don’t know how.”

“No, deary, no; I do’ know’s I much wonder. It would be consid’able great of a job fur ye. An’ I allow it would take a mint o’ money.”

Strange Judith had not thought of the money! Money was so very hard indeed to get, and a mint of it—

“Not a mint—don’t say a mint, Uncle Jem!” she pleaded. She went up close to the bed and took one of the gnarled old hands in hers and beat it with soft impatience up and down on the quilt.

“Not a mint!” she repeated.

“Wal, deary, wal, we’ll see,” comforted the old man. “You set down in that cheer there an’ out with it, the hull story! Mind ye don’t leave out none o’ the fixin’s! Ye can’t rightly see things without ye have all the fixin’s by ye. Now, then, deary—”

Judith told the thrilling little story with all the details at her command. At its end Uncle Jem’s eyes were shining as hers had shone.

“Judy!” he cried, “Judy, it’s got to be did! Ye’ve got to do it!”

“Of course,” Judy answered, with rapt little brown face. “I’m going to, Uncle Jem. But you must help me find a way.”

“Wal,”—slowly, as Uncle Jem thought with wrinkled brows—“Wal, I guess about the fust thing to do is to go an’ ask that hotel child’s ma how much it cost her to go acrost. Then we’ll have that to go by. We ain’t got nothin’ to go by now, deary.”

“No,” Judith answered, dreamily. She was looking out of the little, many-paned window across the distant water. It looked like a very great way.

“I suppose it’s—pretty far,” she murmured wistfully.

“Oh, consid’able—consid’able,” the old man agreed vaguely. “But ye won’t mind that. It won’t be fur comin’ home!”

The faith of the old child and the young was good that this beautiful miracle could be brought about. Judith went home with elastic step and lifted, trustful face.

Jem Three, scuffing barefoot through the sandy soil, met this radiant dream-maiden with the exalted mien. Jem Three was not of exalted mien, and he never dreamed. He was brown up to the red rim of his hair, and big and homely. But the freckles in line across the brownness of his face spelled h-o-n-e-s-t-y. At least, they always had before to Judith Lynn and all the world. To-night Judith was to read them differently.

“Hullo, Jude!”

It is hard to come out of a beautiful dream, plump upon a prosaic boy who says, “Hullo!” It is apt to jolt one. It jolted Judith.

“Oh! Oh, it’s you!” she came out enough to say, and then went back. The prosaic boy regarded her in puzzled wonder. Head up, shoulders back, eyes looking right through you—what kind of a Jude was this! Was she walking in her sleep?

“Hullo, I said,” he repeated. “If you’ve left your manners to home—”

“Oh!—oh, hello, Jem! I guess I was busy thinking.”

“Looked like it. Bad habit to get into. Better look out! I never indulge, myself. Well, how’s luck?”

“Luck? Oh, you mean lobsters?” Judith had not been busy thinking of lobsters, but now her grievance came back to her. “Oh, Jem! I never got but three! All my pains for three lobsters! And two of those just long enough not to be short. It means—I suppose it means a bad season, doesn’t it?”

Jem Three pursed his lips into a whistle. Afterward, when Judith’s evil thoughts had invaded her mind, she remembered that Jem Three had avoided looking at her; yes, certainly he had shifted his bare toes about in the sand. And when he spoke, his voice had certainly sounded muttery.

“Guess somethin’ ails your traps,” he had said. “Warn’t nothin’ the matter with mine.”

“Did you get more than three?”

“Got a-plenty.”

“Jemmy Three, how many’s a-plenty?”

“’Bout twenty-four.”

Jemmy Three had got twenty-four! Judith turned away in bitterness and envy, and afterwards suspicion.

There was nothing the matter with her traps. If Jem Three got twenty-four lobsters in his, why did she get only three in hers? Twenty-four and three. What kind of fairness was that! She could set lobster-traps as well as any Jem Three—or Jem Four—or Five—or Six.

There had always been good-natured rivalry between the fisher-boy and the fisher-girl, and Judith had usually held her own jubilantly. There had never been any such difference as this.

Suddenly was born the evil thought in Judith’s brain. It crept in slinkingly, after the way of evil things. “How do you know but he helped himself out o’ your traps?” That was the whisper it whispered to Judith. Then, well started, how it ran on! “When you and he quarreled a while ago, didn’t he say, ‘I’ll pay you back’?—didn’t he? You think if he didn’t.”

“Oh, he did,” groaned Judith.

“Well, isn’t helping himself to your lobsters paying you back?”

“Yes—oh, yes, if he did. But Jemmy Three never—”

“How do you know he never? Is twenty-four to three a fair average? Is it? Is it?”

“No, oh, no! But I don’t believe—”

“Oh, you needn’t believe! Don’t believe. Go right on finding your traps empty and believing Jemmy Three’d never! I thought you were going to save your lobster-money for Blossom.”

“Oh, I was—I am going to! I’m going to save it to take her across the ocean to that doctor. It was going to be a little wheel-chair, but now it’s going to be legs.”

“But supposing there isn’t any lobster-money? You can’t do much with three lobsters a day. If somebody helps himself—”

“Stop!” cried Judith angrily, and the evil thought slunk away. But it came again—it kept coming. One by one, little trivial circumstances built themselves into suspicions, until the little brown freckles on Jemmy Three’s face came to spell “Dishonesty” to Judith Lynn. If it had not been for the terrible need of lobster-money—Judith would have fought harder against the evil thing if it had not been for that.

“I’ve got to have it! There’s got to be lobsters in the traps!” she cried to herself. “The doctor over there might die! If he died before I could carry Blossom to him, do you think I’d ever forgive Jemmy Three?”—which showed that the Evil Thing had done its work. It might slink away now and stay.

It was a hard night for Judith. Joyful thoughts and evil ones conflicted with each other, and among them all she could not sleep. It was nearly morning before she snuggled up against Blossom’s little warm body and shut her eyes. Her plans were made, as far as she could make them. To-morrow she would go down and question the hotel mother, as Uncle Jem said. To-morrow—she must not wait. And after that—after that, heaven and earth and the waters of the sea must help her. There must be no faithlessness or turning back.

“You shall walk, little Blossom,” Judith whispered softly.

How could she know how soon the sea would help?

Chapter III.

“I want to go, Judy—please, please!”

Blossom was up on her elbow, pleading earnestly. Judith was dressing.

“It’s a Blossom day—you know it’s a Blossom day! And Jemmy Three’ll carry me down. I know Jemmy Three will! I haven’t been out a-dorying for such a long time; Judy—please!”

It was always hard work for Judith to refuse Blossom anything. Besides—Judith went to the window and lifted the scant little curtain—yes, it certainly was a “Blossom day.” The sky was Blossom-blue, the sea spread away out of sight, Blossom-smooth and shining. And the little pleader there in the bed looked so eager and longing—so Blossom-sweet! She should go “a-dorying,” decided Judith, but it would not be Jemmy Three that carried her down to the sea.

“You little tease, come on,