esides, the children were in our own grounds--gipsies could not have
got in without being seen--it is not as if they had been straying about
the lanes."

Everything that could be done had been done. All the ponds in the
neighbourhood had been dragged; the only dangerous place anywhere
near--a sort of overhanging cliff over some unused quarries--had been at
once visited; the quarries themselves searched in every corner--even
though they were very meek-and-mild, inoffensive quarries, where it
would have been difficult to hide even a little dog like Toby. And all,
as we of course know, had been in vain! There really seemed by the end
of this same seventh day _nothing_ left to do. And Grandpapa sat with
bowed gray head, his newspaper unopened on the table beside him, broken
down, brave old soldier though he was,--utterly broken down by this
terrible blow. While Grandmamma slowly drew her arm-chair a little
nearer than usual to the fire, for grief makes people--old people
especially--chilly. All her briskness and energy were gone; her sweet
old face was white and drawn, with no pretty pink flush in the cheeks
now; her bright eyes were dimmed and paled by the tears they had shed,
till now even the power of weeping seemed exhausted.

"I never thought--no, through all I never thought," she murmured to
herself, so low that even if Grandpapa had been much sharper of hearing
than he was her words could not have reached him,--"I never thought that
a day would come when I should thank the Lord that my Marmaduke--yes,
and poor little Lavinia too--had not lived to see their darlings the
pretty creatures they had become! Yet now I am thankful--thankful for
them to have been spared this anguish. Though, again, if they had been
alive and well and able to take care of Duke and Pam, perhaps it would
never have happened."

And once more--for the hundredth time, I daresay--poor Grandmamma began
torturing herself by wondering in what she had erred--how could she have
taken better care of the children?--was it her fault or Grandpapa's, or
Nurse's, or Biddy's, or anybody's? There had been _something_ the matter
with Duke and Pam that last morning; they had had something on their
little minds. She had thought so at the time, and now she was more than
ever sure of it. What could it have been?

"I thought it best not to force their confidence, babies though they
are," she reflected. "But perhaps if I had persuaded them very tenderly,
they woul