felt much the same about it; but grandmother and Theodora were not a
little disturbed. Ellen, however, sided with Addison. "Halse will be
back by to-morrow night," she said. "He and Alfred will have a spat by
that time."

Saturday and Sunday passed, however, and then all the following week,
with no word from them.

On Tuesday evening, when they had been gone eleven days, Mrs. Batchelder
hastened in with alarming news for us. She had had a letter from Alfred,
she said, written from Berlin Falls in New Hampshire, where he had gone
to work in a mill; but he had not said one word about Halstead!

"I don't think they could have gone off together," she said, and she
read Alfred's letter aloud to us, or seemed to do so, but did not hand
it to any of us to read.

We had never trusted Mrs. Batchelder implicitly; and a long time
afterwards it came out that there was one sentence in that letter that
she had not read to us. It was this: "Don't say anything to any of them
about Halstead." Guessing that there had been trouble of some kind
between the boys, she was frightened; to shield Alfred she had hurried
over with the letter, and had tried to make us believe that the boys had
not gone off together.

Addison and I still thought that the boys had set out in company, though
we did not know what to make of Alfred's letter. We were waiting in that
disturbed state of mind, hoping to hear something from Alfred that would
clear up the mystery, when the old Squire came home.

"He has gone away, sir," Addison said at last, when the old gentleman
inquired for Halstead at supper.

"Gone away? Where? What for?" the old gentleman asked in much
astonishment; and then the whole story had to be told him.

The old Squire heard it through without saying much. When we had
finished, he asked, "Did you know that Halstead meant to go away?"

"We did not know for certain, sir," Addison replied.

"Still, you both knew something about it?"

"Yes, sir."

"Did either one of you do anything to prevent it?"

We had to admit that we had done nothing.

The old Squire regarded us a moment or two in silence.

"In one of the oldest narratives of life that have come down to us," he
said at last, "we read that there were once two brothers living
together, who did not agree and who often fell out. After a time one of
them disappeared, and when the other--his name was Cain--was asked what
had become of his brother, he replied, 'Am I my brother's kee