ing and all the summer long, and on into the
fall, and then I gave it up."

"Were you alone, auntie? That is, did nobody help you hunt?" was
Ethelyn's next query; and Richard would have read much hope for him in
the eagerness of the eyes, which waited for Aunt Barbara's answer, and
which dropped so shyly upon the carpet when Aunt Barbara said, "Alone,
child? No; he did all he could--Richard did--but we could get no clew."

Ethelyn could not tell her story until she had been made easy on several
important points, and smoothing the folds of Aunt Barbara's dress, and
still looking beseechingly into her face, she said, "and Richard
hunted, too. Was he sorry, auntie? Did he care because I went away?"

"Care? Of course he did. It almost broke his heart, and wasted him to a
skeleton. You did wrong, Ethie, to go and stay so long. Richard did not
deserve it."

It was the first word of censure Aunt Barbara had uttered, and Ethelyn
felt it keenly, as was evinced by her quivering lip and trembling voice,
as she said: "Don't auntie, don't you scold me, please. I can bear it
better from anyone else. I want you to stand by me. I know I was hasty
and did very wrong. I've said so a thousand times; but I was so unhappy
and wretched at first, and at the last he made me so angry with his
unjust accusations."

"Yes; he told me all, and showed me the letter you left. I know the
whole," Aunt Barbara said, while Ethelyn continued:

"Where is he now? How long since you heard from him?"

"It is two years or more. He wrote the last letter. I'm a bad
correspondent, you know, and as I had no good news to write, I did not
think it worth while to bother him. I don't know where he is since he
quit being governor."

There was a sudden lifting of Ethie's head, a quick arching of her
eyebrows, which told that the governor part was news to her. Then she
asked, quietly, "Has he been governor?"

"Yes, Governor of Iowa; and James' wife lived with him. She was Melinda
Jones."

"Yes, yes," and Ethie's foot beat the carpet thoughtfully, while her
eyes were cast-down, and the great tears gathered slowly in the
long-fringed lids, then they fell in perfect showers, and laying her
head in Aunt Barbara's lap she sobbed piteously.

Perhaps she was thinking of all she had thrown away, and weeping that
another had taken the post she would have been so proud to fill. Aunt
Barbara did not know, and she kept smoothing the bowed head until it was
lifted up ag