orning she did not take the paper in before
going to her room after breakfast, and Neale strolled out and picked up
the sheet.

Ruth was behind him, but he did not know of her presence. She had been
about to secure the morning paper and run upstairs with it, to save Aunt
Sarah the bother of coming down again. As she was about to ask the boy
for it, Ruth noticed that he was staring rigidly at the still folded
paper. His eyes were fixed upon something that appeared in the very
first column of the _Post_.

Now, the _Morning Post_ devoted the first column of its front page to
important announcements and small advertisements--like "Lost and Found,"
the death and marriage notices, and "personals." Agnes called it the
"Agony Column," for the "personals" always headed it.

Ruth was sure Neale was staring at something printed very near the top
of the column. He stood there, motionless, long enough to have read any
ordinary advertisement half a dozen times.

Then he laid the paper quietly on one of the porch chairs and tiptoed
off the veranda, disappearing around the corner of the house without
looking back once; so Ruth did not see his face.

"What can be the matter with him?" murmured Ruth, and seized the paper
herself.

She swiftly scrutinized the upper division of the first column of type.
There were the usual requests for the return of absent friends, and
several cryptic messages understood only by the advertiser and the
person to whom the message was addressed.

The second "Personal" was different. It read as follows:

STRAYED,OR RUNAWAY FROM HIS GUARDIAN:--Boy, 15, slight figure,
very light hair, may call himself Sorber, or Jakeway. His Guardian
will pay FIFTY DOLLARS for information of his safety, or for his
recovery. Address Twomley & Sorber's Herculean Circus and
Menagerie, _en-route_.

Ruth read this through; but she read it idly. It made no more
appeal to her just then than did half a dozen of the other
advertisements--"personal," or otherwise.

So she carried the paper slowly upstairs, wondering all the time what
Neale O'Neil could have seen in the column of advertising to so affect
him. Perhaps had Agnes been at hand to discuss the matter, together the
girls might have connected the advertisement of the tow-headed boy with
Neale O'Neil.

But Agnes was out on an errand, and when she did return she was so full
herself of something which she wished to tell Ruth that she quite drov