long ago did Roddy go?"

"Just after you went. But you mustn't be cross with him; Mamma gave
him permission."

"Mamma is gone, too, to see poor Mrs. Saxby," prattled Coral.

Christine put them gently away from her.

"Well, hurry up and earn your new dollies," she counselled, smiling;
"I'll be back very soon to help you."

In the dining-room, she looked for the discarded roses and found them
gathered in a dying heap on a small side-table. In the nursery, she
found two of Roddy's roses in the jug. The third was missing!

Of one thing she felt as certain as she could feel of anything in the
shifting quicksands of that house, and that was that Roddy had not gone
to the dam, for he had promised her earnestly, the night before, that
never again would he go there without her. Could he, then, have gone
to the cemetery? Even that seemed unlikely, for he loved her to go
with him on his excursions thither. Where else, then? The rose-leaf
she had passed on the road stuck obstinately in her memory, and now she
suddenly remembered that the place she had seen it was near the barn
from whence she had once found Roddy emerging. Perhaps he had gone
there to amuse himself in his own mysterious fashion. He might even
have been there when she passed. Oh, why had she not looked in? But
the omission was easily rectified. In two minutes she was out of doors
again, walking rapidly the way she had come.

Roddy was not in the barn, however, and it seemed at a glance as
harmless a place as she had thought it before. An end of it was full
of forage, and one side piled high with old farm-implements and empty
cases. Rather to the fore of the pile stood one large packing case,
sacking and straw sticking from under its loose lid. Christine had
just decided there was nothing here to warrant her scrutiny when, lying
in front of this case, she saw something that drew her gaze like a
magnet. It was another yellow rose-leaf.

"Roddy!" she cried, and was astonished at the sharp relief in her
voice, for she had suddenly made up her mind that the boy was there
hiding from her. There was no answer to her call. Very slowly then
she went over and lifted the lid of the case. It was quite loose, and
edged with a fringe of strong nails that had once fastened it to the
box, but which now were red with rust. A quantity of sacking, of the
kind used for winding about fragile goods, lay heaped at the top and
came away easily to her hand, exp