ssure which weighs like forty
atmospheres on every true-born Puritan, two young men had been since
Friday in search of the lost girl, each following a clue of his own, and
determined to find her if she was among the living.

Cyprian Eveleth made for the village of Mapleton, where his sister Olive
was staying, trusting that, with her aid, he might get a clue to the
mystery of Myrtle's disappearance.

William Murray Bradshaw struck for a railroad train going to the great
seaport, at a station where it stops for wood and water.

In the mean time, a third young man, Gifted Hopkins by name, son of
the good woman already mentioned, sat down, with tears in his eyes, and
wrote those touching stanzas, "The Lost Myrtle," which were printed in
the next "Banner and Oracle," and much admired by many who read them.

CHAPTER III. ANTECEDENTS.

The Withers Homestead was the oldest mansion in town. It was built on
the east bank of the river, a little above the curve which gave the name
to Oxbow Village. It stood on an elevation, its west gable close to the
river's edge, an old orchard and a small pond at the foot of the slope
behind it, woods at the east, open to the south, with a great row of
Lombardy poplars standing guard in front of the house. The Hon. Selah
Withers, Esq., a descendant of one of the first colonists, built it
for his own residence, in the early part of the last century. Deeply
impressed with his importance in the order of things, he had chosen to
place it a little removed from the cluster of smaller dwellings about
the Oxbow; and with some vague fancy in his mind of the castles that
overlook the Rhine and the Danube, he had selected this eminence on
which to place his substantial gambrel roofed dwelling-house. Long
afterwards a bay-window, almost a little room of itself, had been thrown
out of the second story on the west side, so that it looked directly
down on the river running beneath it. The chamber, thus half suspended
in the air, had been for years the special apartment of Myrtle Hazard;
and as the boys paddling about on the river would often catch glimpses,
through the window, of the little girl dressed in the scarlet jacket she
fancied in those days, one of them, Cyprian Eveleth had given it a name
which became current among the young people, and indeed furnished to
Gifted Hopkins the subject of one of his earliest poems, to wit, "The
Fire-hang-bird's Nest."

If we would know anything about the pe