CHAPTER VI. A Visit to the Mill. HAT splendid things you have brought back with you!" cried his old foster-mother; and her eagle eyes sparkled, and her lean neck waved backwards and forwards more than ever. "You are lucky, Rudy! Let me kiss you, my dear boy!" And Rudy submitted to be kissed; but he looked as if he regarded it as a thing which had to be put up with. "What a handsome fellow you are getting, Rudy!" said the old woman. "Don't talk such nonsense," Rudy replied, laughing; but nevertheless he liked to hear it. "I say it again," said the old woman. "You are very lucky!" "Perhaps you may be right," he rejoined, for he was thinking of Babette. He had never before been so anxious to go down the valley. "They must have gone home," he said to himself. "They were to have been

