busy
little housekeepers in the hollow locked up their orderly cottage and
followed more slowly up to the Eagles' Nest on the bluff.

"Where can the children be?" Tabitha's expectant eyes searched in vain
for a glimpse of the noisy, lively brood of 'eaglets,' who usually saw
her coming a long way off, and met her half-way down the mountainside
with a boisterous shout of welcome. To-day, however, not one of the
sextette was in sight about the queer little brown house, and the whole
place wore a deserted air.

"Maybe they have gone visiting so Mrs. McKittrick can look after her
packing unmolested," suggested Gloriana, letting her keen gray eyes
sweep the steep, rocky incline for some sign of the youthful
McKittricks, but with no better result.

"That must be it," concluded Tabitha, "though I should have
thought--why, Mercedes, Susie! What _is_ the matter?"

Coming suddenly around the corner of a huge boulder where the children
often played house, the two girls almost tumbled over a row of the most
woe-begone, utterly miserable looking figures they had ever
seen,--Mercedes, Susie, Inez, Irene, Rosslyn and Janie, all seated on a
broad, flat rock as stiff as marble statues, and with faces almost as
stony and staring.

"Why, children!" echoed Gloriana, equally amazed. "What are you doing
here? What has happened?"

"Mamma is crying again," whispered Mercedes, dabbing savagely at a tear
which suddenly brimmed over and splashed down the end of her nose.

"She says she won't go and leave us alone with Mercy," gulped Susanne,
striving hard to keep the telltale quiver out of her voice.

"And there ain't money enough to go and take us all," supplemented
Inez, who had earned the title of "Susie's shadow," because she
preferred the society of her older sister to that of her quiet twin.

"Miss Davis has gone away and won't be back until it's too late,"
mourned gentle Irene, gazing sorrowfully down toward the low station
house on the flats below.

"Mrs. Goodale's gone, too, and there ain't nobody else to housekeep for
us," Rosslyn added plaintively, "'cept Mercy."

"But we'd be ist as dood as anjils wiv Mercy," lisped little Janie
dejectedly, seeming to comprehend the tragedy of the situation as well
as did the older children.

Slowly Tabitha turned toward her companion. Gloriana's gray eyes
bravely met the questioning glance of the black ones. "Would your
father----"

"_Our_ father," Tabitha mechanically correct