ough;
you're mistaken in there being any likeness to your late mistress in
her. She seems a plain child, but healthy. If you don't watch her sight,
she may get delicate eyes, however. I should recommend curtains being
put up immediately to these windows, and you're only using night-lights
when she sleeps. It is not _I_ that am likely to injure the baby with
too much light. Good evening, Nurse."

Nurse muttered something, her brow growing black.

"Now, Helen," continued Mrs. Cameron, "we will visit the other children.
This is the boys' room, I presume. I am fond of boys. What are your
brothers' names, my dear?"

"We call them Bob and Bunny."

"Utterly ridiculous! I ask for their baptismal names, not for anything
so silly. Ah! oh--I thought you said they were in bed: these beds are
empty."

So they were; tossed about, no doubt, but with no occupants, and the
bedclothes no longer warm; so that it could not have been quite lately
that the truants had departed from their nightly places of rest. On
further investigation, Firefly's bed was also found in a sad state of
_deshabille_, and it was clearly proved, on visiting their apartments,
that the twins and Katie had not gone to bed at all.

"Then, my dear, where are the family?" said Mrs. Cameron. "You and that
little babe are the only ones I have yet seen. Where is Mary? where is
Katharine? Where are your brothers? My dear Helen, this is awful; your
brothers and sisters are evidently playing midnight pranks. Oh, there is
not a doubt of it, you need not tell me. What a good thing it is that I
came! Oh! my poor dear sister; what a state her orphans have been
reduced to! There is nothing whatever for it but to telegraph for Miss
Grinsted in the morning."

"But, my dear auntie, I am sure, oh! I am sure you are mistaken," began
poor Helen. "The children are always very well behaved--they are,
indeed they are. They don't play pranks, Aunt Maria."

"Allow me to use my own eyesight, Helen. The beds are empty--not a
child is to be found. Come, we must search the house!"

Helen never to her dying day forgot that eerie journey through the
deserted house, accompanied by Aunt Maria. She never forgot the
sickening fear which oppressed her, and the certainty which came over
her that Polly, poor, excitable Polly, was up to some mischief.

Sleepy Hollow was a large and rambling old place, and it was some time
before the searchers reached the neighborhood of the festive garret.
Wh