ed to fall
heavily from the sky. All the seekers were chilled to the very bone, and
the bower, so charming in summer, so perfect a resort, so happy a
hiding-place, was now the very essence of desolation. But Irene cared
nothing for that. She cared nothing for the fact that her thin shoes
were soaked through and through, that her dress hung closely round her,
that her hat was bent forward over her eyes. She only wanted to find
little Agnes, and to have her love again. In the bower Irene did find
the child crouched up in one corner, terrified, an almost unseeing
expression in her eyes. Irene rushed to her with a glad cry.

"My darling! my darling! Oh, my own sweet little darling, come to your
own Irene!"

But Agnes gave a shriek of terror when she saw her.

"No, no! Keep away! It's you who did it! You don't love me! No, no, I
won't come to you!"

The piercing shrieks that came from the poor little girl's lips brought
the rest of the party to the scene. When they appeared, Professor
Merriman holding a lantern, they saw Agnes crouched in the farthest
corner of the bower, her eyes semi-conscious, her face deadly white with
terror, while Irene stood a little way off.

"Some one has turned her brain. Take her; do what you can with her,"
said Irene; and she walked away, not caring where she went.

They brought little Agnes back, and of course they sent for the doctor.
The doctor stayed all night, for he said the child had received some
very severe and terrible shock. Mrs. Merriman nursed her, and the next
day, as soon as possible, Miss Frost returned.

But neither Miss Frost, nor the doctor, nor any one else could ease the
terrors which had laid hold of the brain of little Agnes. She believed
Miss Frost to be a sort of magnified Irene. The very name of Irene was
enough to set her screaming again. She called Irene a fairy, a
changeling, and nothing could soothe her or comfort her.

At last one day the doctor spoke to Mrs. Merriman.

"The case is quite a serious one," he said. "I cannot imagine what has
happened to the child. You ought to find out who put that hedgehog in
her bed. Hedgehogs are quite harmless in their way; but they would give
a timid child a very nasty fright, which she evidently got."

"What we fear is that Irene did it. She has done all sorts of tricks of
that kind before now. You remember how poor Miss Frost went to you on a
certain occasion."

"Alas! that is true. But compared to this, her sin ag