not get it off his tongue. "_Lola
has disappeared!_" He could see now the great man's face as it
flushed with anger and surprise. What would _he_ say--that was the
question?

Probably his reply would be something like this.

"Young fellow, when I hired you, you undertook to look out for my dogs
and see that nothing happened to them. I agreed to pay you good wages
to perform that service and you, on your part, promised to do it
satisfactorily. How have you kept that promise? You knew Lola's value
and you should have looked out for her. It's up to you. You must
either produce that dog or you must pay for her."

He had by this time reached the house and like a criminal who faces
execution and mounts the scaffold steps he climbed the broad flight
leading to the front door. Mr. Crowninshield was on the veranda,
sitting quietly in a big wicker chair, looking out toward the sea. He
was thinking so intently on some imagining of his own that he did not
hear the lad's footfall and Walter was obliged to address him twice
before he answered. Then he started suddenly, as if annoyed at being
disturbed.

"Well?" interrogated he.

The fine introduction that His Highness had planned to utter, together
with everything else he had arranged to say, fled from his memory and
he stood speechless before his employer.

"You wish to see me?" Mr. Crowninshield repeated in a less sharp tone.

"I--yes, sir."

Nevertheless, despite the heavy pause the words the boy sought would
not come. Instead a plaintive jumble of phrases tumbled incoherently
forth, astounding the lad himself almost as much as they did the
person to whom they were addressed:

"Oh, sir, I've lost your dog, Lola! I didn't mean to and I didn't
really lose her. She was gone when I got back from my walk with
Achilles and the others. I left her locked in all right--I know I did.
Where she is or how she got out I've no idea. I'm terribly sorry. I
can't possibly pay for her, and you'll just have to put me in prison.
It's the only way, I guess. Don't blame my mother or Bob, please, or
Jerry either, because I've turned out to be such a duffer. It isn't
their fault. And perhaps I better go straight home. I suppose you
won't want me round here any more."

A great gasp strangled any further utterance and only the lad's
sobbing breath broke the stillness.

Nerved to receive a scourge of maledictions or a blow the culprit
waited. But nothing came--neither vindictives nor chastis