CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
When I was a child, as young as some of the children who may read this story, I brought from the Sunday school one afternoon the story of “Ruth Lee.” The day was warm and bright, and the summer sunshine fell softly on the grass in the old orchard, where, beneath an apple-tree, I sat down to read about Ruth and her half-brother Reuben, to whom she was always so kind, even when he was cross and irritable. The story was not a long one, and I read it very rapidly, growing more and more interested with every page, and wishing so much that I knew just where the brother and sister lived, and if Ruth still watched the web of cloth bleaching on the mountain side, or Reuben in a pet threw his piece of pie over the ledge of rocks, where his good, patient sister could not ge
