ent and alarm broke out afresh when some one brought Annie's
little note to Mrs. Willis, and the school discovered that she also was
missing.

On this occasion no one did doubt her motive; disobedient as her act was
no one wasted words of blame on her. All, from the head-mistress to the
smallest child in the school, knew that it was love for little Nan that
had taken Annie off; and the tears started to Mrs. Willis' eyes when she
first read the tiny note, and then placed it tenderly in her desk.
Hester's face became almost ashen in its hue when she heard what Annie
had done.

"Annie has gone herself to bring back Nan to you, Hester," said Phyllis.
"It was I told her, and I know now by her face that she must have made up
her mind at once."

"Very disobedient of her to go," said Dora Russell; but no one took up
Dora's tone, and Mary Price said, after a pause:

"Disobedient or not, it was brave--it was really very plucky."

"It is my opinion," said Nora, "that if any one in the world can find
little Nan it will be Annie. You remember, Phyllis, how often she has
talked to us about gypsies, and what a lot she knows about them?"

"Oh, yes; she'll be better than fifty policemen," echoed several girls;
and then two or three young faces were turned toward Hester, and some
voice said almost scornfully:

"You'll have to love Annie now; you'll have to admit that there is
something good in our Annie when she brings your little Nan home again."

Hester's lip quivered; she tried to speak, but a sudden burst of tears
came from her instead. She walked slowly out of the astonished little
group, who none of them believed that proud Hester Thornton could weep.

The wretched girl rushed up to her room, where she threw herself on her
bed and gave way to some of the bitterest tears she had ever shed. All her
indifference to Annie, all her real unkindness, all her ever-increasing
dislike came back now to torture and harass her. She began to believe with
the girls that Annie would be successful; she began dimly to acknowledge
in her heart the strange power which this child possessed; she guessed
that Annie would heap coals of fire on her head by bringing back her
little sister. She hoped, she longed, she could almost have found it in
her heart to pray that some one else, not Annie, might save little Nan.

For not yet had Hester made up her mind to confess the truth about Annie
Forest. To confess the truth now meant humiliation in the e