the red western sky. Jenny kept
her eyes fixed upon the mountain. Down in the valley shadows her little
simple face, pale and colorless, gathered another kind of radiance.

There was no school the next day, which was the one before Christmas. It
was pleasant, and not very cold. Everybody was out; the little village
stores were crowded; sleds trailing Christmas-greens went flying; people
were hastening with parcels under their arms, their hands full.

Jenny Brown also was out. She was climbing Franklin Mountain. The snowy
pine boughs bent so low that they brushed her head. She stepped deeply
into the untrodden snow; the train of her green polonaise dipped into
it, and swept it along. And all the time she was peering through those
white fairy columns and arches for--a Christmas-tree.

That night, the mountain had turned rosy, and faded, and the stars were
coming out, when a frantic woman, panting, crying out now and then in
her distress, went running down the road to the Munroe house. It was the
only one between her own and the mountain. The woman rained some
clattering knocks on the door--she could not stop for the bell. Then she
burst into the house, and threw open the dining-room door, crying out in
gasps:

"Hev you seen her? Oh, hev you? My Jenny's lost! She's lost! Oh, oh, oh!
They said they saw her comin' up this way, this mornin'. _Hev_ you seen
her, _hev_ you?"

Earl and his father and mother were having tea there in the handsome
oak-panelled dining-room. Mr. Munroe rose at once, and went forward,
Mrs. Munroe looked with a pale face around her silver tea-urn, and Earl
sat as if frozen. He heard his father's soothing questions, and the
mother's answers. She had been out at work all day; when she returned,
Jenny was gone. Some one had seen her going up the road to the Munroes'
that morning about ten o'clock. That was her only clew.

Earl sat there, and saw his mother draw the poor woman into the room and
try to comfort her; he heard, with a vague understanding, his father
order the horses to be harnessed immediately; he watched him putting on
his coat and hat out in the hall.

When he heard the horses trot up the drive, he sprang to his feet. When
Mr. Munroe opened the door, Earl, with his coat and cap on, was at his
heels.

"Why, you can't go, Earl!" said his father, when he saw him. "Go back at
once."

Earl was white and trembling. He half sobbed: "Oh, father, I must go!"
said he.

"Earl, be reasonab