no more than their neighbors. They did not know what to think.
Perhaps they feared they had not treated their father well. They said
little, but Catherine and Tom talked of it in all innocence. Supposed
clues were reported, but they led to nothing and were soon abandoned.
The baffling mystery of it remained and throughout that entire season
cast its shadow on the community. It passed from the minds of us young
people much sooner than from the minds of our elders. In the rush of
life we largely ceased to think of it; but I am sure it was often in the
thoughts of the old Squire and grandmother. With them months and even
years made little difference in their sense of loss, for no tidings
came--none at least that were ever made public; but thereby hangs the
strangest part of this story.

The old Squire, as I have often said, was a lumberman as well as a
farmer. For a number of years he was in company with a Canadian at Three
Rivers in the Province of Quebec, and had lumber camps on the St.
Maurice River as well as nearer home in Maine. After the age of
seventy-three he gave up active participation in the Quebec branch of
the business, but still retained an interest in it; and this went on for
ten years or more. The former partner in Canada then died, and the
business had to be wound up.

Long before that time Theodora, Halstead and finally Ellen had left home
and gone out into the world for themselves, and as the old Squire was
now past eighty we did not quite like to have him journey to Canada. He
was still alert, but after an attack of rheumatic fever in the winter of
1869 his heart had disclosed slight defects; it was safer for him not to
exert himself so vigorously as formerly; and as the partnership had to
be terminated legally he gave me the power of attorney to go to Three
Rivers and act for him.

I was at a sawmill fifteen miles out of Three Rivers for a week or more;
but the day I left I came back to that place on a buckboard driven by a
French _habitant_ of the locality. On our way we passed a little stumpy
clearing where there was a small, new, very tidy house, neatly shingled
and clapboarded, with plots of bright asters and marigolds about the
door. Adjoining was an equally tidy barn, and in front one of the
best-kept, most luxuriant gardens I had ever seen in Canada. Farther
away was an acre of ripening oats and another of potatoes. A Jersey cow
with her tinkling bell was feeding at the borders of the cleari