We still have no single word of our laddie.... They all tell me not to worry. But how can a mother keep from worrying? I had rather an awful nightmare last night, dreaming that Dinkie was trying to climb the stone wall about our place. He kept falling back with bleeding fingers, and he kept calling and calling for his mother. Without being quite awake I went down to the door in my night-gown, and opened it, and called out into the darkness: “Is anybody there? Is it you, Dinkie?”

My husband came down and led me back to bed, with rather a frightened look on his face.

They tell me not to worry, but I’ve been up in Dinkie’s room turning over his things and wondering if he’s dead, or if he’s fallen into the hands of cruel people who would ill-use a child. Or perhaps he has been stolen by Indians, and will come back to me with a morose and sullen mind, and with scars on his body....