rself a little man again for, Clarence!"

The door closed, and the boy heard the same muffled hoofs and voices die
away towards the front. He began to dress himself mechanically, almost
vacantly, yet conscious always of a vague undercurrent of thrilling
excitement. When he had finished he waited almost breathlessly, feeling
the same beating of his heart that he had felt when he was following the
vanished train the day before. At last he could stand the suspense no
longer, and opened the door. Everything was still in the motionless
caravan, except--it struck him oddly even then--the unconcerned
prattling voice of Susy from one of the nearer wagons. Perhaps a
sudden feeling that this was something that concerned HER, perhaps an
irresistible impulse overcame him, but the next moment he had leaped to
the ground, faced about, and was running feverishly to the front.

The first thing that met his eyes was the helpless and desolate bulk of
one of the Silsbee wagons a hundred rods away, bereft of oxen and pole,
standing alone and motionless against the dazzling sky! Near it was the
broken frame of another wagon, its fore wheels and axles gone, pitched
forward on its knees like an ox under the butcher's sledge. Not far away
there were the burnt and blackened ruins of a third, around which the
whole party on foot and horseback seemed to be gathered. As the boy ran
violently on, the group opened to make way for two men carrying some
helpless but awful object between them. A terrible instinct made
Clarence swerve from it in his headlong course, but he was at the same
moment discovered by the others, and a cry arose of "Go back!" "Stop!"
"Keep him back!" Heeding it no more than the wind that whistled by him,
Clarence made directly for the foremost wagon--the one in which he
and Susy had played. A powerful hand caught his shoulder; it was Mr.
Peyton's.

"Mrs. Silsbee's wagon," said the boy, with white lips, pointing to it.
"Where is she?"

"She's missing," said Peyton, "and one other--the rest are dead."

"She must be there," said the boy, struggling, and pointing to the
wagon; "let me go."

"Clarence," said Peyton sternly, accenting his grasp upon the boy's arm,
"be a man! Look around you. Try and tell us who these are."

There seemed to be one or two heaps of old clothes lying on the ground,
and further on, where the men at a command from Peyton had laid down
their burden, another. In those ragged, dusty heaps of clothes, fr