a crimson pillow lay a face almost as crimson.

"Fo' de lan' ob lub! How come dat yeah--dis--What's hit mean, li'l gal
Do'thy?"

Dolly had not long been missed nor, when she was, had anybody felt
serious alarm, though the girl guests had both been aggrieved that she
should not have wakened them in time to be prompt for breakfast. They
dressed hurriedly when Norah came a second time to summon them,
explaining:

"Miss Dorothy's room is empty and her clothes on the chairs. I must go
seek her for she shouldn't do this way if she wants to keep cook good
natured for the Party. Delaying breakfast is a bad beginning."

Then Norah departed and went about her business of dusting; and it was
she who had found the missing girl in the sun-parlor, and it had been
her cry of relief that brought the household to that place.

Demanded old Ephraim sternly:

"Why fo' yo'-all done leab yo' baid in de middle ob de night an' go
sky-la'kin' eround dis yere scan'lous way, Missy Dolly Calve't? Tole
me dat!"

"Why do you leave yours, to sleep on the library couch, Ephraim?" she
returned, keenly observing him from the enclosure of her girl friends'
arms, who held her fast that she might not again elude them.

Ephraim fairly jumped; though he looked not at her but in a timid way
toward Dinah, still bending in anxious curiosity over the stranger on
the couch; and she was not so engrossed but that her turbaned head
rose with a snap and she fixed her fellow servant with a fiercely
glaring eye. Between these two equally devoted members of "Miss
Betty's" family had always existed a bitter jealousy as to which was
the most loyal to their mistress's interests. Let either presume upon
that loyalty, to indulge in a forbidden privilege, and the wrath of
the other waxed furious. Both knew that for Ephraim to have lain where
Dorothy had discovered him, during that past night, was "intol'able"
presumption, and at Dinah's care would be duly reported upon and
reprimanded.

Alas! The old man's start and down-dropped gaze was proof in Dorothy's
opinion of a graver guilt than Dinah imputed to him, and when he made
no answer save a hasty exit from the room her heart sank.

"Oh! how could he do it, how could he!" and then honesty suggested.
"But I haven't asked him yet if he did take the bills!" and she
smiled again at her own thoughts.

Attention was now diverted to Dinah's picking up the stranger from the
couch and also departing, muttering:

"I 'l