ing the rack. "I
think it is your duty," she added.

Mrs. Lamb sank into the rocking-chair and wept; but within an hour's
time Mehitable stood shivering and sobbing in her night-gown, and held
out her pretty little hands while her mother switched them with a small
stick. Aunt Susy was crying down in the sitting-room. "Did she tell?"
she inquired, when her sister, quite pale and trembling, came in with
the stick.

"No," replied Mrs. Lamb. "I never will whip that dear child again, come
what will." And she broke the stick in two and threw it out of the
window.

As the day advanced teams began to pass the house. Now and then one
heard a signal horn. The search for Hannah Maria was being organized.
Mrs. Lamb and the aunts cooked a hot breakfast, and carried it over to
Mr. and Mrs. Green. They felt as if they must do something to prove
their regret and sympathy. Mehitable was up and dressed, but her poor
little auburn locks were not curled, and the pink roundness seemed gone
from her face. She sat quietly in her little chair in the sitting-room
and held her doll. Her mother had punished her very tenderly, but there
were some red marks on her little hands. She had not eaten any
breakfast, but her grandmother had kindly made her some thoroughwort
tea. The bitterness of life seemed actually tasted to poor little
Mehitable Lamb.

It was about nine o'clock, and Mrs. Lamb and the aunts had just carried
the hot breakfast over to the Green's, and were arranging it on the
table, when another team drove into the yard. It was a white horse and a
covered wagon. On the front seat sat Hannah Maria's aunt, Jenny Dunn,
and a young lady, one of Hannah Maria's cousins. Mrs. Green ran to the
door. "Oh, Jenny, _have_ you heard?" she gasped. Then she screamed, for
Hannah Maria was peeking out of the rear of the covered wagon. She was
in there with another young lady cousin, and a great basket of yellow
apples.

"Hannah Maria Green, where _have_ you been?" cried her mother.

"Why, what do you think! That child walked 'way over to our house last
night," Aunt Jenny said, volubly; "and Timothy was gone with the horse,
and there wasn't anything to do but to keep her. I knew you wouldn't be
worried about her, for she said the little Lamb girl knew where she'd
gone, and--"

Mrs. Green jerked the wagon door open and pulled Hannah Maria out. "Go
right into the house!" she said, in a stern voice. "Here she wouldn't
tell where you'd gone. And the