“How does it happen,” said Mrs. Abbott, as she carved the roast beef at dinner, “that there are so many vacant places at the table?”

“I don’t understand it at all,” said Miss Blake. “No one has asked to be excused, and irregularity at meals has never been a fault of any of our household.”

“Elfie is missing too,” said Mrs. Abbott, “but she is undoubtedly up-stairs in the room with Candace.”

“She is in Katie Ashley’s charge for school hours this week,” said Miss Blake.

“True, but where is Katie? Does any one at the table know where Katie and the other absent ones are?”

But no one knew, and Mrs. Abbott, with some displeasure expressed on her face, sent one of the maids up-stairs to search for the absentees, while the dinner proceeded in uncomfortable silence till interrupted just as the plates of the first course were being removed by the entrance of Lily, who ran into the room with a white face, glanced at Elfie’s vacant place, and cried out apprehensively:

“O, I did hope she might have come back alone! We cannot find her anywhere!”

“Who are you talking about?” asked Mrs. Abbott, turning very pale and speaking sternly. “Is it Elfie you cannot find?”

Then Lily, before them all, gave a rapid history of the deliberate disobedience, their interview with the fortune-teller, and Elfie’s disappearance.

Mrs. Abbott heard it to the end in silence, but her face looked haggard and worried as she herself led the way to a thorough search in every direction. The other S. C. girls had nothing to add to Lily’s story, but huddled together regretting bitterly, now that it was too late, their disobedience, which had caused all this trouble.

Inquiries at the station showed that the fortune teller and her sister, with a man in attendance, took the train at 1:15, but as they did not get their tickets it could not be learned at what place they would leave the cars. They reached the station only just in time for the train, which they boarded instantly. They were loaded down with shawls and packages, but no one saw a child in their company. The proprietor of the livery-stable said two ladies who had stopped a day behind the circus hired a carriage of him, but on meeting a gentleman friend dismissed him with orders to meet them and take charge of his carriage at the arrival of the 1:15 train. He was a moment late, but found his horses and the empty carriage standing back of the station and the young man just following the ladies into the cars. They had paid him more than he asked when dismissing him.

It was some hours before another train left, and Mrs. Abbott, in sad perplexity, went to her old friend Mr. Mason, the bank president, who was also Addie’s father, who advised telegraphing to Troy to have the in-coming train searched for the party, which they described as nearly as possible.

It was not till Mr. Mason spoke incidentally of the girl who brought the check in the morning that Mrs. Abbott remembered she had not seen Marion since sending her to him.

Going home again she sought her at once in Candace’s room. The poor woman had but just learned of Elfie’s disappearance, and her anguish was pitiful to see. She rose from her bed at once, conquering the pain that had kept her a prisoner there, and declaring she would go in search of her child.

“O, where, where was Miss Marion,” she asked, “not to be looking after my pet?”

It had become certain by that time that Marion had also disappeared, and, though there was no ground for hoping it, Candace instantly declared that Marion had gone after her darling.

Mr. Mason and Mrs. Abbott were at the station waiting for the cars when a telegram was brought to her from the office within the building.