Sunbeam, she learned, had arrived before her. Thomas Jefferson, the
black stable-man, reported him as partaking of a sumptuous supper with
unimpaired relish. The thought of her favorite, crunching his feed in
the stall close at hand, gave her a sense of companionship as she ate
her own solitary meal. Her father had been called in consultation to a
neighboring town and would not return until the following day.

After supper Amy curled herself up in an easy-chair under the
drop-light, and opened a new novel which she had been longing to read,
ever since Stephen Burns's arrival. She thought with strong disapproval
of the manner in which he had been taking possession of her time for two
weeks past. She looked at the clock; it was half-past-eight.

"Well! that's over with!" she thought, with a half guilty pang of
conviction.

Somehow the novel was not as absorbing as she had anticipated. She let
it drop on her lap, and sat for awhile listening to the storm outside,
as she reviewed this strange, unnatural episode of half-betrothal which
had turned out so queerly.

A sharp ring at the telephone in the adjoining room broke in upon her
revery. She hastened to answer it. It was an inquiry from the
livery-stable for Mr. Stephen Burns. He had not brought the horse back,
nor had he returned to his hotel. Did Miss Lovejoy perhaps know of his
whereabouts? Did she think they had better send out a search-party?

Miss Lovejoy knew nothing of his whereabouts, and she was strongly of
the opinion that he had better be looked up. As she still stood
listening at the telephone, her heart knocking her ribs in a fierce
fright, she heard a voice in the distant stable, not intended for her
ears, say: "Not much use to search! If he ain't under cover he ain't
alive." Upon which the heart ceased, for several seconds, its knocking
at the ribs, and Amy Lovejoy knew how novel-heroines feel, when they are
described as growing gray about the lips.

She could not seem to make the telephone tube fit in its ring, and after
trying to do so once or twice, she left it hanging by the cord, and went
and opened the front door and stood on the veranda. It did not seem to
her especially cold, but over there, in the light that streamed from the
parlor window, the snow lay drifted into a singular shape, that looked
as if it might cover a human form. She shuddered sharply and went into
the house again. From time to time she telephoned to the stable. They
had sent