some of your food? I wish I knew how.' And then she went and asked the maids, but they didn't know any more than she did; and then she went to her papa's study, and asked him his advice upon the matter.

'Well, my darling,' he said, 'since you ask me, I will tell you what I think at once. These wild animals. can hardly ever be made tame unless you catch them when they are very, very young, which is difficult in the case of a mouse. If you keep your pet in the box, I am afraid you will find that nothing will make him eat, and in a day or two he will starve himself to death. If you want to be really kind to the poor little fellow, the only way is to turn him loose in the room where you caught him, and let him find his own way back to his home and his friends !'

Kate's blue eyes filled with tears at first, for she had set her heart on making the little mouse quite tame, and she didn't like the thoughts of losing her new pet. But she knew that her papa was sure to be right; and she would have been very sorry if the poor little mouse had starved itself, and died in the box, which would probably have been the case if he had been kept there another day. So she gave a little sigh, and then determined that she would do what was most kind to the prisoner. She took the box, and went with it to the room where they had had the tea-party, with nobody with her but her little sister. Then she said to the mouse, 'You poor little fellow, I am determined that you shall not die if I can help it. I am going to let you loose, so that you may run back to all your mouse friends and relations, and play about and be as happy as ever.' Then Kate put the box down upon the floor, and took off the lid. The mouse was too frightened

and weak to move at first; but presently he ran up the side of the box, and hopped on to the carpet. Meanwhile the children stood quite quiet, watching what would happen. The little mouse did not at first know where he was; but as nobody chased and confused him, he had time to collect his scattered ideas, and presently remembered all about it.

Casting his keen, black eyes about, he saw the corner of the room from which he had come into it through the hole in the wainscot, and he ran off in that direction as fast as his legs would carry him. The little girls clapped their hands with joy, as they saw him run off.

'There,' cried Kate, 'the little thing is quite safe and happy now!' and she ran off to tell her papa and mamma.

You may well imagine that Mr Mouse was right glad to be free again, and safe and sound behind the wainscot. He made the best of his way back to his old home without any delay; and squeaked with delight when he found himself once more in the house from which he had started.

'Well,' said he to himself, travelling may be all very well for those who can afford it; but for my part, I think the danger is greater than the pleasure. Besides, we all of us have duties to perform at home; and although it is doubtless a good thing to gain experience by going out into the world, still it is better and wiser not to neglect our duties, and home is the best place after all for a well-behaved mouse. So now that I know something of what goes on outside in the gay world, I will rest satisfied with the knowledge I have already gained, and remain where I know that I am well off,

as well as safe from the dangers which I have so fortunately escaped this time. Home for me henceforward, and let those travel who like it.'

True to his word, the little mouse always stayed at home after that famous journey. Nothing could tempt him to leave the old house in which he had been born; and although his travelled friends often laughed at him for being such a stay-at-home' fellow, he only winked his eye knowingly at them, and kept on in the usual habits of his every-day homely life, which he was still living and enjoying when I last heard of him.

218

VI.

THE WITCH OF BROOKE HOLLOW.

PART I.

IN the good old days-I don't know exactly their date, but it comes to the same thing-in the good old days, when there were no railroads, nor, for the matter of that, turnpike roads either, and when the best highways were but bad, and people moved about so little from place to place that any one who had been twenty miles away from home was thought to have seen a good deal of the world, and a person who had ever been to London was accounted a mighty traveller indeed; in those happy times when the penny post had never been dreamed of, and if it had been in full work, so very few people knew how to write, that there would have been light work indeed for the postman, witches and wizards flourished in great abundance, and the famous witch of Brooke Hollow was one of the foremost among them all.

Everybody knows Brooke Hollow, who has ever walked from Wye by the road under the hill which joins the old Stone-street road above Horton Park. A couple of miles or so from Wye the hill seems as if

somebody had cut a huge slice out of it just like a thick wedge of bread cut out of a loaf by a very hungry schoolboy. Exactly like the great hole which would thus be left in the loaf, a deep ravine runs back into the hill, which at the present time is entirely grass at the top, bottom, and sides—a pretty green valley forming a break in the otherwise uninterrupted line of chalk hills which are called the Backbone of Kent.'

But in these good old times of which we are now talking, this ravine was a rough, wild place,—rough with tangled brakes, briars, and brambles; wild with scraggy bushes and stunted trees, and only to be traversed by narrow little paths which seemed as if they had been made by wild animals creeping to their hiding-places, and perfectly impassable for any crinoline-wearing mortal, or indeed for any one at all who had much respect for his or her dress.

This was Brooke Hollow in the olden time, and never was there such a place for a witch to choose for her home! In fact, any elderly lady who had taken up her abode in such a queer locality would have been set down for a witch at once, for no one who was not either a witch or stark staring mad would have dreamed of living there. Small blame to the good people, therefore, who declared that old Goody Stickels was a witch and nothing but a witch, and who never went nearer Brooke Hollow than they could help, but hurried past it as fast as possible whenever they had occasion to travel upon the road of which I have spoken.

And there were more reasons than the mere fact of her living in Brooke Hollow which proved old Goody Stickels to have something strange about her. Had not Tom Tickner, the crafty higgler' of Brabourne,