rowled Felix, who never seemed to be
any particular friend of Willy Fraser's either. "He'd better learn how
to spell before he takes to writing love letters."

"Maybe Cyrus will starve to death if you don't," suggested Sara Ray.

"I hope he will," said Cecily cruelly. She was truly vexed over the
letter; and yet, so contradictory a thing is the feminine heart, even at
twelve years old, I think she was a little flattered by it also. It was
her first love letter and she confided to me that it gives you a very
queer feeling to get it. At all events--the letter, though unanswered,
was not torn up. I feel sure Cecily preserved it. But she walked past
Cyrus next morning at school with a frozen countenance, evincing not the
slightest pity for his pangs of unrequited affection. Cecily winced when
Pat caught a mouse, visited a school chum the day the pigs were killed
that she might not hear their squealing, and would not have stepped on a
caterpillar for anything; yet she did not care at all how much she made
the brisk Cyrus suffer.

Then, suddenly, all our spring gladness and Maytime hopes were blighted
as by a killing frost. Sorrow and anxiety pervaded our days and
embittered our dreams by night. Grim tragedy held sway in our lives for
the next fortnight.

Paddy disappeared. One night he lapped his new milk as usual at Uncle
Roger's dairy door and then sat blandly on the flat stone before it,
giving the world assurance of a cat, sleek sides glistening, plumy tail
gracefully folded around his paws, brilliant eyes watching the stir and
flicker of bare willow boughs in the twilight air above him. That was
the last seen of him. In the morning he was not.

At first we were not seriously alarmed. Paddy was no roving Thomas,
but occasionally he vanished for a day or so. But when two days passed
without his return we became anxious, the third day worried us greatly,
and the fourth found us distracted.

"Something has happened to Pat," the Story Girl declared miserably. "He
never stayed away from home more than two days in his life."

"What could have happened to him?" asked Felix.

"He's been poisoned--or a dog has killed him," answered the Story Girl
in tragic tones.

Cecily began to cry at this; but tears were of no avail. Neither was
anything else, apparently. We searched every nook and cranny of barns
and out-buildings and woods on both the King farms; we inquired far and
wide; we roved over Carlisle meadows calling Padd