e three
girls had left them.

Ah! yes. The chairs were in their places, Alfaretta's list of guests
as well, and even the little leather bag out of which she had drawn
the wealth that so surprised her mates. But the ten crisp notes she
had so spread out in the sight of all--where were they?

Certainly nowhere to be seen, although that revealing moonlight made
even Alfy's written words quite legible. What could have become of
them? Who had taken them? And why? Supposing somebody had stolen in
and stolen them? Supposing that was why he was sleeping in the
library? Yet, if there had been thievery there, wouldn't he have kept
awake, to watch? Supposing--here a horrible thought crept into her
mind--supposing _he_, himself, had been the thief! She was southern
born and had the southerner's racial distrust of a "nigger's" honesty;
yet--as soon as thought she was ashamed of the suspicion. Aunt Betty
trusted him with far more than she missed now. She would go over to
that window and think it out. Maybe the sleeper would awake in a
minute and she could ask him about it.

The question was one destined to remain unasked. As she stood gazing
vacantly outward, her hands clasped in perplexity, something moving
arrested her attention. A small figure in white, or what seemed white
in that light. It was circling the pond where the water-lilies grew
and was swaying to and fro as if dancing to some strange measure. Its
skirts were caught up on either side by the hands resting upon its
hips and the apparition was enough to startle nerves that had not
already been tried by the events of that night.

Dorothy stood rooted to the spot. Then a sudden movement of the dancer
which brought her perilously near the water's edge recalled her common
sense.

"Why, it's one of the girls! It must be! Which? She doesn't look like
either--is she sleep-walking? Who, what can it mean?"

Another instant and she had opened the long sash and sped out upon the
rain-soaked lawn; and she was none too soon. As if unseeing, or
unfearing, the strange figure swept nearer and nearer to the moonlit
water, its feet already splashing in it, when Dorothy's arms were
flung around it to draw it into safety.

"Why--" began the rescuer and could say no more. The face that slowly
turned toward her was one that she had never seen before. It was the
face of a child under a mass of gray hair, and its expression
strangely vacant and inconsequent. Danger, fear, responsibility