even fancied that the
cold snow wuz a little more soft and slushy than it had been, but
couldn't tell for certain.

CHAPTER XIV

A dretful thing has happened! I am almost too agitated to talk about
it, but when I went down with my pardner and Tommy to breakfast ruther
late, for we wrote some letters before we went down, Miss Meechim
broke the news to me with red eyes, swollen with weepin'. Aronette,
that dear sweet little maid that had waited on all on us as devoted as
if we wuz her own mas and mas, wuz missin'. Her bed hadn't been slep'
in for all night; she went out early in the evenin' on a errent for
Dorothy and hadn't come back.

She slept in a little room off from Dorothy's, who had discovered
Aronette's absence very early in the morning, and they had all been
searching for her ever sence. But no trace of her could be found; she
had disappeared as utterly as if the earth had opened and swallowed
her up. Dorothy wuz sick in bed from worry and grief; she loved
Aronette like a sister; and Miss Meechim said, bein' broke up by
sorrow, "Next to my nephew and Dorothy I loved that child."

And anon another dretful thing wuz discovered. Whilst we wuz talkin'
about Aronette, Elder Wessel rushed in distracted, with his neck-tie
hangin' under one ear, and his coat buttoned up wrong and the feathers
of his conceit and egotism and self-righteousness hangin' limp as a
wet hen.

Lucia had gone too; had disappeared jest as Aronette had, no trace
could be found of her; her bed had not been slept in. She, too, had
gone out on an errent the evening before. She and Aronette had been
seen to leave the hotel together in the early evening. Elder Wessel,
half distracted, searched for them with all his strength of mind and
purse.

I started Josiah off a huntin' the minute he had got through eatin'.
He refused pint blank to go before. "Eat," sez I, "who can eat in such
a time as this?"

Sez he, "It goes agin my stomach every mou'ful I take (which was true
anyway), but we must eat, Samantha," sez he, helpin' himself to
another cake. "We must eat so's to keep up our strength to hunt high
and low."

Well, I spozed he wuz in the right on't, but every mou'ful he consumed
riled me. But at last the plate wuz emptied and the coffee pot out and
he sot off. And we searched all that day and the next and the next,
and so did Miss Meechim and Arvilly, with tears runnin' down her face
anon or oftener.

Robert Strong, led on, Miss M