V. 



LITTLE PRISONERS IN THE TOWER. 



I HAD not spent many days in The Little 

 Lover's dooryard before realizing that there was 

 something in the wind. If an inoffensive per- 

 son fancies sitting in the shade of a sycamore 

 with her horse grazing quietly beside her, who 

 should say her nay? If, at her approach, a 

 feathered person steals away to the top of the 

 highest, most distant oak within sight and, silent 

 and motionless, keeps his eye on her till she 

 departs ; if, as she innocently glances up at the 

 trees, she discovers a second feathered per- 

 son's head extended cautiously from behind a 

 trunk, its eyes fixed on hers ; or if, as she passes 

 along a sycamore street, a person comes to 

 a window and cranes his neck to look at her, 

 and instantly leaves the premises ; then surely, 

 as the world wags, she is quite justified in hav- 

 ing a mind of her own in the matter. Still 

 more, when it comes to finding chips under 

 a window who could do aught but infer that 

 a carpenter lived within? Not I. And so 

 it came about that I discovered that one of the 

 apartments in the back of the wren sycamore 



