at with cold, hard knuckles,
without suspecting anything.

Then Alanna disappeared and Mrs. Costello sent the maids and babies on
without her. It was getting dark and cold for the small Costellos.

But the hour was darker and colder for Alanna. She searched and she
hoped and she prayed in vain. She stood up, after a long
hands-and-knees expedition under the tables where she had been earlier,
and pressed her right hand over her eyes, and said aloud in her misery,
"Oh, I CAN'T have lost it! I CAN'T have. Oh, don't let me have lost it!"

She went here and there as if propelled by some mechanical force, a
wretched, restless little figure. And when the dreadful moment came
when she must give up searching, she crept in beside her mother in the
carriage, and longed only for some honorable death.

When they all went back at eight o'clock, she recommenced her search
feverishly, with that cruel alternation of hope and despair and
weariness that every one knows. The crowds, the lights, the music, the
laughter, and the noise, and the pervading odor of pop-corn were not
real, when a shabby, brown little book was her whole world, and she
could not find it.

"The drawing will begin," said Alanna, "and the Bishop will call out
the number! And what'll I say? Every one will look at me; and HOW can I
say I've lost it! Oh, what a baby they'll call me!"

"Father'll pay the money back," she said, in sudden relief. But the
impossibility of that swiftly occurred to her, and she began hunting
again with fresh terror.

"But he can't! How can he? Two hundred names; and I don't know them, or
half of them."

Then she felt the tears coming, and she crept in under some benches,
and cried.

She lay there a long time, listening to the curious hum and buzz above
her. And at last it occurred to her to go to the Bishop, and tell this
old, kind friend the truth.

But she was too late. As she got to her feet, she heard her own name
called from the platform, in the Bishop's voice.

"Where's Alanna Costello? Ask her who has number eighty-three on the
desk. Eighty-three wins the desk! Find little Alanna Costello!"

Alanna had no time for thought. Only one course of action occurred to
her. She cleared her throat.

"Mrs. Will Church has that number, Bishop," she said.

The crowd about her gave way, and the Bishop saw her, rosy,
embarrassed, and breathless.

"Ah, there you are!" said the Bishop. "Who has it?"

"Mrs. Church, your Grace," said