l with
him!--still keeps his place in the oaken chair.

Phoebe first tried the shop-door. It did not yield to her hand; and
the white curtain, drawn across the window which formed the upper
section of the door, struck her quick perceptive faculty as something
unusual. Without making another effort to enter here, she betook
herself to the great portal, under the arched window. Finding it
fastened, she knocked. A reverberation came from the emptiness within.
She knocked again, and a third time; and, listening intently, fancied
that the floor creaked, as if Hepzibah were coming, with her ordinary
tiptoe movement, to admit her. But so dead a silence ensued upon this
imaginary sound, that she began to question whether she might not have
mistaken the house, familiar as she thought herself with its exterior.

Her notice was now attracted by a child's voice, at some distance. It
appeared to call her name. Looking in the direction whence it
proceeded, Phoebe saw little Ned Higgins, a good way down the street,
stamping, shaking his head violently, making deprecatory gestures with
both hands, and shouting to her at mouth-wide screech.

"No, no, Phoebe!" he screamed. "Don't you go in! There's something
wicked there! Don't--don't--don't go in!"

But, as the little personage could not be induced to approach near
enough to explain himself, Phoebe concluded that he had been
frightened, on some of his visits to the shop, by her cousin Hepzibah;
for the good lady's manifestations, in truth, ran about an equal chance
of scaring children out of their wits, or compelling them to unseemly
laughter. Still, she felt the more, for this incident, how
unaccountably silent and impenetrable the house had become. As her
next resort, Phoebe made her way into the garden, where on so warm and
bright a day as the present, she had little doubt of finding Clifford,
and perhaps Hepzibah also, idling away the noontide in the shadow of
the arbor. Immediately on her entering the garden gate, the family of
hens half ran, half flew to meet her; while a strange grimalkin, which
was prowling under the parlor window, took to his heels, clambered
hastily over the fence, and vanished. The arbor was vacant, and its
floor, table, and circular bench were still damp, and bestrewn with
twigs and the disarray of the past storm. The growth of the garden
seemed to have got quite out of bounds; the weeds had taken advantage
of Phoebe's absence, and the long-