t yerself, for I
won't. There!"

Directly after the dwarf heard her rapid steps retreating in the
direction of the hostelry, and again he blessed Moll Harris in his
heart; for he knew full well that the lantern had not been extinguished
accidentally, but by a quick-witted woman's willing fingers.

CHAPTER XIV.

AT EVENING TIME.

"Ah! what would the world be to us
If the children were no more?
We should dread the desert behind us
Worse than the dark before.

"Ye are better than all the ballads
That ever were sung or said;
For ye are living poems,
And all the rest are dead."

--LONGFELLOW.

It was not quite a week since Darby and Joan had so suddenly and
mysteriously disappeared from Firgrove; yet to the distracted aunts it
seemed as if years instead of days had dragged away since that bright
morning when they had bidden the little ones good-bye, and left them
standing among the pussies and the flowers, looking the picture of
health, beauty, and innocence. And where were they now? Dead, drowned,
Aunt Catharine felt convinced, although she had no further proof of
their fate than what was indicated by the finding of Darby's hat; for,
notwithstanding all their efforts, not another trace of the missing
children had been discovered. They had assuredly fallen into the canal,
argued Miss Turner. The locks were so often open, the keepers so dull
and unobservant, that their bodies might easily have drifted by without
being noticed. Then, once past Barchester, they would be washed away by
the next outgoing tide--far, far away, wrapped in a tangle of brown and
green seaweed; or perhaps they were lying fathoms deep beneath the
restless, shifting waters, whence they should rise no more until that
day "when the sea gives up its dead."

Nurse Perry took the same hopeless view of the children's fate as Miss
Turner. She wandered about from morning till night with Eric in her
arms, searching the most unlikely places, questioning everybody she met
in her eager desire to discover the lost little ones--"for all the
world," said cook, "like a creature that was off her head!" She grew
quite pale and thin, with a sad, frightened look in her eyes which even
the blandishments of Mr. Jenkins, when he came of a morning for orders,
could not banish; their rims were red, too, as from frequent tears, for
many a good cry poor Perry had. She blamed herself unreservedly for th