oat ahead of me, but she couldn't have done so, for she's
nowhere in sight;" she murmured to herself.

When all had crossed and still Dorothy did not appear, the anxious
teacher returned to the boat and renewed her search there: asking of all
the employees she met if they had seen her missing charge. But one of
them had noticed the girl at all; that was a workman who had helped to
drag the gang-plank into place upon the wharf and against whom Dorothy
had rudely dashed in her pursuit of the "shiny man."

He remembered her excited manner, her swift apology to himself for the
accident, and her frantic rush across the wharf. He had looked after her
with curiosity and had remarked to a bystander:

"That little passenger is afraid she'll get left! Maybe she doesn't know
we lie alongside this dock till mid-afternoon."

Then he had gone about his own affairs and dismissed her from his mind
till, thus recalled by Miss Greatorex's question, he wished he had
watched her more closely. He was afraid she might have been hurt among
the heavy wagons moving about, and that was the poor comfort which he
expressed to the now thoroughly frightened lady.

Meanwhile the Breckenridge party had crossed the street, under
conveyance of a waiting policeman, and had paused upon the further curb
while Molly explained:

"Miss Greatorex is dreadful slow, Papa dear. But she'll be here in a
minute. She's sure to be and Dolly with her. Oh! she is the very
sweetest, dearest, bravest girl I ever knew! If I had a sister I should
want her to be exactly like Dorothy. I wonder what does keep them! And
I'm so hungry, so terribly hungry and we lost our purses--couldn't be
she'd linger to search for them again when we've already ransacked the
whole boat! Why, Papa, look! Miss Greatorex is on the boat again,
herself. Running, fairly running around the deck and acting as if she,
too, had lost something. How queer that is!"

Both the gentleman and lady now fixed their attention upon the teacher,
until that moment unknown to them. She certainly was conducting herself
in a strange, half-bewildered manner and the Judge realized that there
was something wrong. Bidding his sister and child:

"Stay right here on this corner. Don't leave it. I'll step back to the
steamer and see what's amiss;" and to the hackman he had summoned, he
added: "Keep your rig right on the spot and an eye upon these fares!
I'll be back in a minute."

[Illustration: "ARE YOU A POLICEMAN