addy? He had disappeared, been murdered, perhaps,--or gagged and
carried away by the man in the chaise.

Mrs. Ducklow flew hither and thither (to use a favorite phrase of her
own), "like a hen with her head cut off;" then rushed out of the house
and up the street, screaming after the chaise,--

"Murder! murder! Stop thief! stop thief!"

She waved her hands aloft in the air frantically. If she had trudged
before, now she trotted, now she cantered; but, if the cantering of the
old mare was fitly likened to that of a cow, to what thing, to what
manner of motion under the sun, shall we liken the cantering of Mrs.
Ducklow? It was original; it was unique; it was prodigious. Now, with
her frantically waving hands, and all her undulating and flapping
skirts, she seemed a species of huge, unwieldy bird, attempting to fly.
Then she sank down into a heavy, dragging walk,--breath and strength all
gone,--no voice left even to scream "murder!" Then, the awful
realization of the loss of the bonds once more rushing over her, she
started up again. "Half running, half flying, what progress she made!"
Then Atkins's dog saw her, and, naturally mistaking her for a prodigy,
came out at her, bristling up and bounding and barking terrifically.

"Come here!" cried Atkins, following the dog. "What's the matter? What's
to pay, Mrs. Ducklow?"

Attempting to speak, the good woman could only pant and wheeze.

"Robbed!" she at last managed to whisper, amid the yelpings of the cur
that refused to be silenced.

"Robbed? How? Who?"

"The chaise. Ketch it."

Her gestures expressed more than her words; and, Atkins's horse and
wagon, with which he had been drawing out brush, being in the yard
near-by, he ran to them, leaped to the seat, drove into the road, took
Mrs. Ducklow aboard, and set out in vigorous pursuit of the slow
two-wheeled vehicle.

"Stop, you, sir! Stop, you, sir!" shrieked Mrs. Ducklow, having
recovered her breath by the time they came up with the chaise.

It stopped, and Mr. Grantly, the minister, put out his good-natured,
surprised face.

"You've robbed my house! You've took--"

Mrs. Ducklow was going on in wild, accusatory accents, when she
recognized the benign countenance.

"What do you say? I have robbed you?" he exclaimed, very much
astonished.

"No, no! not you! You wouldn't do such a thing!" she stammered forth,
while Atkins, who had laughed himself weak at Mr. Ducklow's plight
earlier in the morning, now laugh