ed footsteps in the hall may have been nothing but the rustling
of the hangings, but still he was not satisfied. He ventured up the
first flight and paused to listen. He thought he heard a movement
above, but was not quite sure. He neither wished to intrude nor to
frighten her unnecessarily, but he called her name. At first he
received no response, and then, with a sense of relief that made him
realize how deep his fear had been, he saw her come to the head of the
stairs. The light came only from the sick room, so that he could not
see her very clearly. She took a step towards them, and then he
noticed that she swayed and clutched the banister. He was at her side
in three bounds.

"What is the trouble?" he demanded.

"If you will steady me a bit," she answered.

"Are you hurt?"

"Just dazed a little. Did you stop him?"

"Stop him? Then some one did go out?"

"As I opened the door Ben rushed by me and--I fell down. I hoped you
might see him and hold him!"

"I was at the other end of the library. He must have stolen out on
tiptoe. But you are faint."

"I am stronger now."

She started down the stairs with the help of the banister, holding
herself together with remarkable self control. As they came into the
light he saw that she was very pale, but she insisted that she needed
nothing but a breath of cool air. He helped her to the door and here
she sat down for a moment upon the step.

"I might take a look around the grounds," Donaldson suggested.

"It is quite useless. He is not here."

"Then you have an idea where he has gone!"

She hesitated a moment.

"Yes," she answered.

He waited, but she ventured nothing further.

"I want you to feel," he said quietly, "that you may call upon me for
anything you wish done. My time is my own--quite my own. I place it
at your service."

She turned to study his face a moment. It was clean and earnest. It
bade her trust. Yet to ask him to do what lay before her was to bring
him, a stranger, into the heart of her family affairs. It was to
involve her in an intimacy from which instinctively she shrank. But
pressing her close was the realization of the imminent danger
threatening the boy. This was no time for quibbling--no time for nice
shadings of propriety. Even if this meant a sacrifice of something of
herself, she must cling to the one spar that promised a chance for her
brother's safety. As Donaldson's eyes met hers, she felt ashamed tha