to discover, else
the Wares would not have adopted it as "guide, philosopher and friend."

CHAPTER IV

THE WITCH WITH A WAND

Snow lay deep over Lone-Rock, muffling every sound. It was so still in
the cozy room where Jack sat reading by the lamp, that several times he
found himself listening to the intense silence, as if it had been a
noise. No one moved in the house. He and Mary were alone together, and
she on the other side of the table was apparently as interested in a
pile of letters which she was re-reading as he was in his story. But
presently, when he finished it and tossed the magazine aside, he saw
that his usually jolly little sister was sitting in a disconsolate bunch
by the fire, her face buried in her hands.

She had pushed the letters from her lap, and the open pages lay
scattered around her on the floor. There were five of them, from
different employment agencies. Jack had read them all before supper,
just as he had been reading similar ones at intervals for the last two
months and a half. The answers had always been disappointing, but until
to-day they had come singly and far apart. Undismayed, she had met them
all in the spirit of their family motto, insisting that fortune would be
compelled to change in her favor soon. She'd be so persistent it
couldn't help itself.

Five disappointments, however, all coming by the same post, were more
than she could meet calmly. Besides, these were the five positions which
seemed the most promising. The thought that they were the last on her
list, and that there was no clue now left for her to follow, was the
thought that weighed her down with the heaviest discouragement she had
ever felt in all her life. She had made a brave effort not to show it
when Jack came home to supper earlier in the evening. The two ate alone
for the first time that she could remember, Mrs. Ware and Norman having
been invited to take supper with the Downs family. It was a joint
birthday anniversary, Billy Downs and his mother happening to claim the
same day of the month, though many years apart.

Mary talked cheerfully of the reports Billy had brought of the two cakes
that were to adorn the table, one with fifteen candles for him and the
boys, and one with forty-eight icing roses for his mother and her
friends. She had put on a brave, even a jolly front, until this last
re-reading of her letters. Now she had given away to such a sense of
helplessness and defeat that it showed