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So the sensitive little chap walked slowly away, trying in vain to choke back the indignant sobs that would persist in making themselves heard, and feeling very bitterly the injustice of his Aunt Nancy’s action. He longed for sympathy in this time of trial, and for some friendly ear into which he might pour his griefs. Even Cynthia’s company was denied him, for she was seated in the kitchen under her mother’s watchful eye, taking slow, awkward stitches in the patchwork, a square of which was her allotted task for each day.

“I’ll find Uncle Phin,” said Arthur to himself, “and tell him all about it, and perhaps he will somehow find a way to get my book again, and then I’ll ask him to take me away from here, to some place where I can keep it always.”

Somewhat cheered by having a definite purpose in view, the forlorn little fellow started across the fields toward a distant wood-lot, in which he knew his sympathizing old friend and adviser was at work.

Uncle Phin was a white-headed, simple-hearted, old negro, who, some years before, had been a slave belonging to Colonel Arthur Dale, of Dalecourt, Virginia. He had been the constant attendant, in her daily horseback rides, of the Colonel’s only daughter, the lovely Virginia Dale, to whom her father had formally presented him, as a birthday gift, when she was fifteen years old.