the family they do, they
don't know how to control themselves and show any sense. I feel it
as much as they do, but I have been sitting here all the morning; I
know I can't do anything to help, and I am working a good deal
harder, waiting, than they are, rushing from pillar to post and
taking on, and I'm doing more good. I shall be the only one fit to
do anything when they find the poor child. I've got blankets warming
by the fire, and my tea-kettle on, and I'm going to be the one to
depend on when she's brought home." Mrs. Zelotes gave a glance of
defiant faith from the window down the road as she spoke. Then she
settled back in her chair and resumed her Bible, and dismissed the
tall and forbidding woman whom she had summoned to save the honor of
her family resolutely from her conscience. The editors of _The Spy_
and _The Observer_ had a row of ingratiating photographs of little
Ellen from three weeks to seven years of age; and their opinions as
to the cause of her disappearance, while fully agreeing in all
points of sensationalism with those of young Bemis, of _The Star_,
differed in detail.

Young Bemis read about the mysterious kidnapper, and wondered, and
the demand for _The Star_ was chiefly among the immediate neighbors
of the Brewsters. Both _The Observer_ and _The Spy_ doubled their
circulation in one day, and every face on the night cars was hidden
behind poor little Ellen's baby countenances and the fairy-story of
the witch-woman who had lured her away. Mothers kept their children
carefully in-doors that evening, and pulled down curtains, fearful
lest She look in the windows and be tempted. Mrs. Zelotes also
waylaid both of the Boston reporters, but with results upon which
she had not counted. One presented her story and Fanny's and Eva's
with impartial justice; the other kept wholly to the latter version,
with the addition of a shrewd theory of his own, deduced from the
circumstances which had a parallel in actual history, and boldly
stated that the child had probably committed suicide on account of
family troubles. Poor Fanny and Eva both saw that, when night was
falling and Ellen had not been found. Eva rushed out and secured the
paper from the newsboy, and the two sisters gasped over the
startling column together.

"It's a lie! oh, Fanny, it's a lie!" cried Eva. "She never would;
oh, she never would! That little thing, just because she heard you
and me scoldin', and you said that to her, that if it w