E. COXHEAD.

This evening the sisters were pacing arm in arm up and down the long,
wide gravel walk between the front door and the gate. Miss Turner looked
pinched and worn, with pale cheeks and great hollows about her eyes,
which were dim and dry as if from want of sleep. Her head was bent, her
step was slow like the step of an old person; and indeed she seemed
old--ten years older than the brisk and vigorous Aunt Catharine who had
trodden the same path with such a stately air only a week ago.

Miss Alice's gentle face also was thin and white. Her eyes, which were
big and gray like Darby's, and usually soft and calm in their glance,
were alert, bright, and restless, as if always on the watch for
something they could not see, while in her nut-brown hair there were
nearly twice as many silver streaks as had been visible when Darby and
Joan went away.

They had been speaking of the lost little ones, but now a silence had
fallen upon them which neither showed any desire to break. There was
nothing more to say except what had already been said over and over
again. Everything had been done that they and wise, kind neighbours
could do or suggest; and on the morrow Dr. King and Mr. Grey would put
the case into the hands of the Barchester police--more to satisfy Miss
Turner than from any faith in the result on their own part. The Firdale
men had done their best and failed; what cleverer would they be in
Barchester?

The air had grown chilly, although the sun was not yet set, and Miss
Turner shivered, as much from nervousness as from cold. Her sister was
drawing her within doors, when the latch of the gate clicked sharply,
and both ladies turned round to look in its direction.

And what did they see as the wide iron gate swung slowly back on its
hinges? The oddest looking group that had ever sought entrance to
Firgrove--the most pathetic, yet the most grotesque! First and foremost
was a small boy in soiled, sodden garments--hatless, unwashed,
unbrushed, tired, drooping, and travel-stained, yet with an expression
of unutterable gladness beaming from out a pair of clear gray eyes that
seemed far too big for the thin white face which they illumined. By his
side, holding fast by the boy's hand, stood a little girl--bedraggled,
unkempt, untidy, with a glimmer of pearly teeth, and great blue eyes
gleaming out from a mop of tangled curls that glittered as if they had
caught within their burnished strands all the sunbeams which h