sy's long wrapper following
after little Dotty Dimple like the closing feet in one of Polly's
long-metre verses. Still the moon shone with the same white, ghostly
light, and the sun continued to keep away.

"This beats all," said Polly, mournfully; as she washed her hands,
strained the milk, and set the pans away. "If I judged by my feelings, I
should say it must be six o'clock, or very near it. At any rate, I'm
going to have a cup of tea. What's this smell?"

On the stove stood a pool of something which looked like liquid silver,
and proved to be the remains of the best tea-pot. At any other time
Dotty would have felt very sorry; but now the accident seemed a mere
trifle, when compared with the staying away of the sun. Who could tell
"if ever morn should rise?"

Even Miss Polly, with her constitutional gloom, was not just now so
miserable as Dotty, and never dreamed that it was anything but
sleepiness which made the little girl so sober. Dotty was not a child
who could tell all the thoughts which troubled her youthful brain.

"Well, well," said Polly, giving another inquiring glance at the sky;
"not a streak of daylight yet! I'll tell you what it is, Dotty; we might
as well go to bed."

But hark! As she spoke there was a loud report as of a pistol. It seemed
to come from the cellar.

Miss Polly clapped both hands to her ears. Dotty shrieked, and hid her
face in her lap, and shrieked again.

"It has come! It has come!" cried she,--meaning the end of the
world,--and stopped her ears.

"What, what, what!" whispered Polly, in sore affright, walking back and
forth, and taking snuff as she went. It was certainly startling to hear
a pistol go off so unexpectedly, at that solemn hour, under one's very
roof. Polly naturally thought first of housebreakers. She had barred and
double-barred every door and window; but now she remembered with
dreadful remorse she had not fastened the outside cellar door. No doubt
it had been left open, and burglars had got into the cellar. O, what a
responsibility had been put upon her! and why hadn't somebody
particularly warned her to attend to that door? Perhaps the burglars
were stealing pork. But they would not have fired a pistol at the
barrel--would they? O, no; they were trying to blow up the house!

Polly took three pinches of snuff, one after the other, as fast as she
could, slipped off her shoes, went to the kitchen window, and peeped
through the blinds. Not much to be seen but