nty-Eighth_

This is Thursday the twenty-eighth of April. I want to be sure of
that. For there are very few things I can be sure of now.

The bottom has fallen out of my world. I sit here, telling myself to
be calm. But it's not easy to sit quiet when you face the very worst
that all life could confront you with. _My Dinkie has run away._

My boy has left me, has left his home, has vanished like smoke into
the Unknown. He is gone and I have no trace of him.

I find it hard to write. Yet I _must_ write, for the mere expression
of what I feel tends to ease the ache. It helps to keep me sane. And
already I realize I was wrong when I wrote "the very worst that all
life could confront you with." For my laddie, after all, is not dead.
He must still be alive. And while there's life, there's hope.

I got back from Banff yesterday morning about nine, and Hilton was
there with the car to meet me, as I had told him to be. I was anxious
to know at once if everything was all right, but I found it hard to
put a question so personal before that impersonal-eyed Englishman. So
I strove to give my interrogation an air of the casual by offhandedly
inquiring: "How's Rowdy, Hilton?"

"Dead, ma'am," was his prompt reply.

This rather took my breath away.

"Do you mean to say that Rowdy is _dead_?" I insisted, noticing
Poppsy's color change as she listened.

"Killed, ma'am," said the laconic Hilton.

"By whom?" I demanded.

"Mr. Murchison, ma'am," was the answer.

"How?" I asked, feeling my vague dislike for that particular name
sharpen up to something dangerously like hatred.

"He always comes up the drive a bit fast-like, ma'am. He hit the pup,
and that was the end of him!"

"Does Dinkie know?" was my first question, after that.

"He _saw_ it, ma'am," admitted my car-driver.

"Saw what?"

"Saw Mr. Murchison throw the dog over the wall into the brush!"

"What did he say?"

"He swore a bit, ma'am, and then laughed," admitted Hilton, after a
pause.

"Dinkie laughed?" I cried, incredulous.

"No; Mr. Murchison, ma'am," explained Hilton.

"What did Dinkie say?" I insisted. And again the man on the
driving-seat remained silent a moment or two.

"It was what he _did_, ma'am," he finally remarked.

"What did he do?" I demanded.

"Ran into the house, ma'am, and snatched the icepick off the kitchen
table. Then he went to the big car like a mad 'un, he did. Pounded
holes in every blessed tire with his pick!"

"And t