s that had never been taken.

They had been able to learn little about her father's death as yet. A
Paris paper reported, and Boston papers copied, the statement that an
American of his name, stopping at an obscure French town, was missing
for two days, and found on the third, murdered, robbed, horribly
disfigured. Mr. George Breynton had been traveling alone in the interior
of the country, and had written home that he should be in this
town--St. Pierre--at precisely the time given as the date of the
American's death. So his long silence was awfully explained to Joy. The
fact that the branch of his firm with which he had frequent business
correspondence, had not received the least intelligence of him for
several weeks, left no doubt of the mournful truth. Something had gone
wrong in the shipping of certain goods, which had required his immediate
presence; they had therefore written and telegraphed to him repeatedly,
but there had been no reply. Day by day the ominous silence had shaded
into alarm, had deepened into suspense, had grown into certainty.

Mr. Breynton had fought against conviction as long as he could, had
clung to all possibilities and impossibilities of doubt, but even he had
given up all hope.

Dead--dead, without a sign; without one last word to the child waiting
for him across the seas; without one last kiss or blessing; dead by
ruffian hands, lying now in an unknown, lonely grave. It seemed to Joy
as if her heart must break. She tried to fly from the horrible, haunting
thought, to forget it in her dreams, to drown it in her books and play.
But she could not leave it; it would not leave her. It must be taken
down into her heart and kept there; she and it must be always alone
together; no one could come between them; no one could help her.

And so there was nothing to do but take that dreary journey home from
Washington, come quietly back to Yorkbury, come back without father or
mother, into the home that must be hers now, the only one left her in
all the wide world; nothing to do but to live on, and never to see him
any more, never to kiss him, never to creep up into his arms, or hear
his brave, merry voice calling, "Joyce, Joyce," as it used to call about
the old home. No one called her Joyce but her father. No one should ever
call her so again.

Tom called her so one day, never thinking.

"I don't want to hear that--not that name," said Joy, flushing
suddenly; then paling and turning away.

Sh