e, because it was bigger. There's no house between but the
Donalds', and they're all off at his mother's funeral to Lancaster.
You don't suppose the cars run over her?"

"I don't know," said Miss Spring's nephew, in real trouble by this
time.

They went out together, and looked everywhere along the road,
apologizing to each other as they did so. They went up and down the
railroad for some little distance, and it was a great relief not to
find her there. Joseph asked some men if they had seen his aunt; and
when they said no, wonderingly, and expected an explanation, he did
not give it, he hardly knew why. They went to the house beyond Miss
Catherine's, though Martha and Miss Stanby were sure she had not gone
by. They looked in the barn even: they went out into the garden and
through the house, for she might possibly have come in without being
seen; but she had apparently disappeared from the face of the earth.

It had seemed so foolish at first to tell the neighbors; but by seven
o'clock, or nearly that, Martha Spring said decisively, "She cannot
have gone far unless she has been carried off. I think you had better
get some men, and have a regular hunt for her before it gets any
darker. I'm not going home to-night until we find her." And they owned
to each other that it was a very serious and frightful thing. Miss
Stanby looked most concerned and apprehensive of the three, and
suggested what had been uppermost in her mind all the time,--that it
would be so awful if poor Miss Spring had been murdered, or could she
have killed herself? There was something so uncharacteristic in the
idea of Miss Catherine's committing suicide, that for a moment her
nephew could not resist a smile; but he was grave enough again
directly, for it might be true, after all, and he remembered with a
thrill of horror that old Mr. Elden, the lawyer, had told him in
confidence, that Miss Spring was somewhat pinched for money,--that her
affairs were in rather a bad way, and perhaps he had better talk with
her, as he himself did not like to have all the responsibility of
advising her.

"Poor old lady!" thought Joseph Spring, who was a tender-hearted man.
"She looked to-day as if she felt bad about something. She has grown
old this last year, that's a fact!" It seemed to him as if she were in
truth dead already. "You had better look all over the house," said he
to his wife. "Did you look in the garret?" He remembered the story
that his great-grand