ad a hand in the disappearance of anybody's children; they usually had
plenty of their own.

The ladies discussed the ins and outs of the odd affair with Mr. Grey in
all its bearings. At length they were forced to the conclusion that it
was in the region of the canal they must seek the little ones--whether
about it or in it only time should tell. Miss Alice wept softly, while
Miss Turner was wondering, with a terrible weight on her heart, what she
should say in the cablegram to Africa; for if Darby and Joan did not
turn up, and soon too, she knew that their father should have to be
informed of the calamity which had befallen him.

Mr. Grey hurried home to snatch a hasty meal and tell his wife not to be
anxious about his absence. Then he and Tom Brook, with two other men,
set off to follow the clue furnished by Tom Brook's children. At
Firgrove the household waited, eager for news, with what patience they
could command, and they needed a good share; for waiting, as everybody
knows, is wearier work than doing.

Step by step, two of them on one side and two on the other, they tramped
along the course of the canal, poking with their sticks into the long,
sedgy grass and reeds beside its banks, peering among the clumps of
osiers that grew thick and tall in the damp, spongy ground below the
tow-path. On, on they went, only pausing for a few minutes now and
again, to take a rest or to hold a consultation. They questioned closely
every pedestrian whom they met by the way, but nobody could give them
any tidings to help them in their search. And still they pressed on,
past locks, hamlets, villages--on, on, until, when night was closing in
around them, they reached Barchester. There, perforce, they must pause;
for beyond Barchester was the sea, so at Barchester the canal came to an
abrupt conclusion.

It was a weary and dispirited little group that gathered on the wharf in
the fast-falling darkness of the October evening. The other men, as well
as Mr. Grey, had known Captain Dene from his infancy almost, and two of
them had little ones of their own snug and safe by their cottage hearths
at that dull evening hour. They consequently felt keenly the sorrow that
threatened the absent father; also the distress and trouble of the aunts
at Firgrove, who had so generously taken upon them the responsible duty,
which not infrequently turns out a thankless task, of taking charge of
somebody else's bairns.

The wharf, except for themselv