the bag," and he didn't; he merely replied:

"She left home a few days ago. Dick was in St. Louis, and it was
lonesome stayin' alone. I'll find her, most likely, as she is
somewhere else."

Andy was in his saddle now, and his fleet steed fled swiftly along
toward home, where they waited so anxiously for him, Richard tottering
to the window so as to read his fate in Andy's tell-tale face.

"She is not there. I knew she was not. She has gone with that villain."

Richard did not mean to say that last. It dropped from him mechanically,
and in an instant his mother seized upon it, demanding what he meant,
and who was the villain referred to. Richard tried to put her off, but
she would know what he meant, and so to her and his three brothers he
told as little as he could and make any kind of a story, and as he
talked his heart hardened toward Ethie, who had done him this wrong. It
seemed a great deal worse when put into words, and the whole expression
of Richard's face was changed when he had finished speaking, while he
was conscious of feeling much as he did that night when he denounced
Ethie so terribly to her face. "Had it been a man, or half a man, or
anybody besides that contemptible puppy, it would not seem so bad; but
to forsake me for him!" Richard said, while the great ridges deepened in
his forehead, and a hard, black look crept into his eyes, and about the
corners of his mouth. He was terrible in his anger, which grew upon him
until even his mother stood appalled at the fearful expression of
his face.

"He would do nothing to call her back," he said, when James suggested
the propriety of trying in a quiet way to ascertain where she had gone.
"She had chosen her own path to ruin, and she might tread it for all of
him. He would not put forth a hand to save her and if she came back, he
never could forgive her."

Richard was walking up and down the room, white with rage, as he said
this, and Andy, cowering in a corner, was looking on and listening. He
did not speak until Richard declared his incapacity for forgiving Ethie,
when he started up, and confronting the angry man, said to him
rebukingly:

"Hold there, old Dick! You have gone a leetle too far. If God can
forgive you and me all them things we've done, which he knows about, and
other folks don't, you can, or or'to forgive sister Ethie, let her sin
be what it may. Ethie was young, Dick, and childlike, and so pretty,
too, and I 'most know you aggravated her