, the store-closet. Marianne even
lifted the lid of the great copper boiler and peeped in to make sure
that he was not there! Louisa ran wildly about the garden, looking
behind currant bushes and raspberry vines, and parting the tall feathers
of the asparagus lest Archie should have chosen to hide among them. She
tapped the great green watermelons with her fingers as she
passed,--perhaps she fancied that Archie might be stowed away inside of
one. All was in vain. Archie was not behind the currant bushes, not even
in the melon patch. Louisa began to sob and cry, Marianne, never
backward, joined her with a true Irish howl; and it was in this
condition that Archie's Papa found things when he came downstairs to
breakfast.

Then ensued a fresh confusion.

"Where did you say the book was lying, Louisa?" said Mr. Gray, trying to
make out the meaning of her sobbing explanation.

"Just here, sir, on the hall table. Oh, the darling child, whatever has
come to him?"

"Oh, wurra! wurra!" chimed in Marianne. "He been and got took away by
wicked people, perhaps. Well niver get him back, niver!"

"The hall table? Then he must have passed out this way. Surely you must
have seen him or heard him open the door, Marianne?"

"Is it I see him, sir? I'd niver forget it if I had. Oh, the pretty face
of him! Wurra! wurra!"

"But, now I think of it, the child couldn't have opened the door for
himself," went on Papa, growing impatient. "Did you leave it standing
open at all, Marianne?"

"Only for a wee moment while I fetched in the milk," faltered Marianne,
growing rosy-red as she reflected on the length of the "moment" which
she had passed at the gate with the milkman.

"That must have been the time, then," said Mr. Gray. "Probably the
little fellow has set off by himself for a walk. I'll go after and look
for him. Don't frighten Mrs. Gray when she comes down, Louisa, but just
say that Archie and I are both gone out. Try to look as you usually do."

This, however, was beyond Louisa's powers. Her eyes were as red as a
ferret's, and her cheeks the color of purple cherries from crying and
excitement of mind. Mrs. Gray saw at once that something was wrong. She
began to question, Louisa to cry, and the secret came out in a burst of
sobs and tears. "Master Archie--bless his little heart!--has got out of
bed and ran away into the woods. The master was gone after him, but he'd
niver find him at all at all"--(this was Marianne's addition). "