to go to sleep on the way! What next, I wonder?” Don flourished his whip in the air to express all the things he could not put into language, but the horses took it as a hint to go faster, and they tore along at such a pace that Pam was breathless and giddy from being shaken and bumped.

“Old Wrack Peveril will sit up when we come walking in upon him, I guess,” said a girl with a loud voice who was sitting at the rear of the wagon.

“He will sit up still more when he sees the supper we have brought him,” replied Galena Gittins, who was sitting just behind Pam. “Folks say the old man never has a decent meal, because he is too mean to spend money on proper food, the wretched old skin-a-flint!”

Pam wrenched herself round with a violence which all but upset Sophy Grierson, who was rather cramped for room.

“It is not fair to talk like that before me,” she said explosively. “Mr. Wrack Peveril is my grandfather, and I have come all the way from England to live with him. I don’t believe he is so mean, but I am afraid that he is poor, and he sent the money to pay my passage, so perhaps he has not been able to buy things for himself.”

“Are you Nancy Peveril’s girl?” cried a stout woman who sat on the seat with Galena Gittins, and as she asked the question she leaned forward and gripped the shoulder of Pam in the friendliest fashion imaginable.

“I am Pamela Walsh, and my mother was Nancy Peveril before she married my father,” replied Pam with great dignity, and then her shoulder was gripped more heartily than before by the excitable stout woman.

“Dear, dear, how time flies! I declare it makes me feel quite old to think of Nancy having a grown-up daughter. My dear, we are ever so glad to see you; but I don’t think your mother should have let you come all this way alone to live with an old man like Wrack Peveril, who won’t have a woman inside his doors.”

“He won’t be able to help himself to-night!” chuckled the girl with the loud voice.

Pam caught her breath in a gasp of dismay. Her mother had written to Ripple to say that Pam was coming instead of Jack, but there had been no time for an answer to that letter. It was the very first time since she had left England that a doubt of her welcome assailed her. Now she was suddenly afraid, and she cowered closer against Sophy Grierson, while she wondered what sort of a greeting she would get when 

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