gh her grief.

"I suppose you'll say next that Baby hasn't really disappeared."

"He has disappeared," conceded Miss Gilpet, "but only because you
haven't sufficient faith to find him. It's only lack of faith on your
part that prevents him from being restored to you safe and well."

"But if he's been eaten in the meantime by a hyaena and partly
digested," said Clovis, who clung affectionately to his wild beast
theory, "surely some ill-effects would be noticeable?"

Miss Gilpet was rather staggered by this complication of the question.

"I feel sure that a hyaena has not eaten him," she said lamely.

"The hyaena may be equally certain that it has. You see, it may have
just as much faith as you have, and more special knowledge as to the
present whereabouts of the baby."

Mrs. Momeby was in tears again. "If you have faith," she sobbed,
struck by a happy inspiration, "won't you find our little Erik for us?
I am sure you have powers that are denied to us."

Rose-Marie Gilpet was thoroughly sincere in her adherence to Christian
Science principles; whether she understood or correctly expounded them
the learned in such matters may best decide. In the present case she
was undoubtedly confronted with a great opportunity, and as she started
forth on her vague search she strenuously summoned to her aid every
scrap of faith that she possessed. She passed out into the bare and
open high road, followed by Mrs. Momeby's warning, "It's no use going
there, we've searched there a dozen times." But Rose-Marie's ears were
already deaf to all things save self-congratulation; for sitting in the
middle of the highway, playing contentedly with the dust and some faded
buttercups, was a white-pinafored baby with a mop of tow-coloured hair
tied over one temple with a pale-blue ribbon. Taking first the usual
feminine precaution of looking to see that no motor-car was on the
distant horizon, Rose-Marie dashed at the child and bore it, despite
its vigorous opposition, in through the portals of Elsinore. The
child's furious screams had already announced the fact of its
discovery, and the almost hysterical parents raced down the lawn to
meet their restored offspring. The aesthetic value of the scene was
marred in some degree by Rose-Marie's difficulty in holding the
struggling infant, which was borne wrong-end foremost towards the
agitated bosom of its family. "Our own little Erik come back to us,"
cried the Momebys in unison; as the ch