erself. Great,
therefore, was Betsy Waroonga's alarm when she missed her one day from
her little bed where she should have been sleeping.

"Ebony!" cried Betsy, turning sharply round and glaring, "Zariffa's
gone."

"_Quite_ dead," exclaimed the negro, aghast.

"Not at all dead," said Betsy; "but gone--gone hout of hers bed."

"Dat no great misfortin', missis," returned Ebony, with a sigh of
relief.

"It's little you knows, stoopid feller," returned the native
missionary's wife, while her coal-scuttle shook with imparted emotion;
"Zariffa never dis'beyed me in hers life. She's lost. We must seek--
seek quick!"

The sympathetic negro became again anxious, and looked hastily under the
chairs and tables for the lost one, while her mother opened and searched
a corner cupboard that could not have held a child half her size. Then
the pair became more and more distracted as each excited the other, and
ran to the various outhouses shouting, "Zariffa!" anxiously,
entreatingly, despairing.

They gathered natives as they ran, hither and thither, searching every
nook and corner, and burst at last in an excited crowd into the presence
of Waroonga himself, who was in the act of detailing the history of
Joseph to a select class of scholars, varying from seven to seventeen
years of age.

"Oh! massa, Zariffa's lost!" cried Ebony.

Waroonga glanced quickly at his wife. The excessive agitation of her
bonnet told its own tale. The missionary threw Joseph overboard
directly, proclaimed a holiday, and rushed out of the school-house.

"No use to go home, massa," cried Ebony; "we's sarch eberywhere dar; no
find her."

"Has you been to the piggery?" demanded the anxious father, who was well
aware of his child's fondness for "little squeakers."

"Oh, yes; bin dar. I rousted out de ole sow for make sure Zariffa no
hides behind her."

At this juncture Orlando came up with a sack of cocoa-nuts on his back.
Hearing what had occurred he took the matter in hand with his wonted
energy.

"We must organise a regular search," he said, throwing down the sack,
"and go to work at once, for the day is far advanced, and we can do
little or nothing after dark."

So saying he collected all the able men of the village, divided them
into bands, gave them minute, though hurried, directions where they were
to go, and what signals they were to give in the event of the child
being found; and then, heading one of the bands, he joined eagerly