"Where is Harty?" asked Dolly anxiously.

Freddy and Tom looked surprised.

"Where is he?" said the latter. "He was not with

us."

"But has he not been to your house this afternoon?" asked Aunt Charlotte.

"No, indeed," replied Freddy, "I wish he had."

"Have you been home since you left the wood?" asked Aunt Charlotte.

"Oh! yes," returned the boys, almost together. "We sent James home, and told him we would bring Bannock home ourselves."

"We took the good doggy home, to give him water and a jolly feed," said Freddy.

"What time was that?" asked Aunt Charlotte. "About six o'clock," replied Tom.

"It struck six just as we crossed the home field," added Freddy.

"Harty leaves school at five," said Dolly, who was growing very pale. Her fancy began to picture all sorts of things which might have happened to her brother.

"Hasn't he been home to tea?" asked Tom Fairbairn. "No," replied Aunt Charlotte. She rose, and rang the bell.

When Jessie came she said, here."

"Tell James to come

James was the man who worked in the garden, attended to the chickens and the pony, and was very

useful in the house, though he was very lame, and deaf besides.

"James," said Aunt Charlotte; "go round the garden and look for Harty. You had better take your lantern and look into the summer-house and the toolshed; he may have fallen asleep there, it was very hot this afternoon."

The Fairbairn boys started up, and would have gone too; but Aunt Charlotte desired them to remain.

"Harty is touchy sometimes," she said, "and might not like to be caught napping."

She smiled, but still she looked uneasy. Aunt Charlotte believed, as Dolly did, that her nephew was sulky, and had hidden away somewhere. Her worst fear was

that he might take a bad cold from sleeping in the night air; that alone made her vexed. But when James returned, and said he could see nothing of Master Harty, either in the garden or shrubbery, all present began to look amazed.

Dolly's face was quite pale, and as she drew close up to her aunt's side the tears gathered in her eyes, and her little hands were tightly clasped.

"Auntie, where can Harty be?” she whispered.

James still waited.

"You must go over to Mr. Merton at once, James," said his mistress, and ask what time Harold Winwood left school. "He may have been kept in late, my dear," she added to Dolly, as the man left the room.

"Oh! Miss Winwood, he would not be kept in so late as this," cried Freddy.

"I know that, of course," replied Aunt Charlotte, hastily, "but he might have left late, and gone home with one of his schoolfellows. Do not look so terrified, my dear," she said to her little niece. "We shall soon find your brother, he cannot be far off."

In less time than could have been believed possible James was back again. Harold Winwood had not been to school that afternoon at all!

Then, indeed, Aunt Charlotte looked grave and alarmed.

Dolly burst into tears.

"Oh! Harty, dear Harty, where can he be!" she cried: her aunt in vain attempted to comfort her.

Tom and Freddy hurried off, to take the strange tidings to their home.

*

When Harty awoke it was pitch dark. For a moment he had forgotten where he was. He tried to rise, and found his limbs stiff, with lying on the damp earth. He stumbled to his feet, and tried to feel what was around him. Nothing but the black darkness, and the wind moaning in the trees.

He thought it must be a dream.
"Aunt Charlotte!" he cried.
"Dolly!

No answer. Only the rustling of the leaves overhead.

He rushed wildly forward for a minute. His head struck violently against a tree, and he fell, stunned and bleeding, to the ground.

CHAPTER X.

FOUND IN THE POND.

THE next morning all Sherway was astir, almost as soon as it was light. The news had spread that Harold Winwood, the gay, handsome boy at the Cottage, had disappeared; and every one was wondering, and forming some conjecture to account for the strange occurrence.

It had been all Jessie's work to answer the calls made at the cottage door, to learn if anything had been heard of the missing lad. She stood now, after her last reply in the negative, holding a consultation with James.

"Wherever do you think he can be now?" she asked, for the twentieth time; and for the twentieth time James shook his head.

"Ay, it's hard to tell," he said; "Master Harty was always a rare one for wanderings and travels, leastways for tales of them. I mind how he would go on about old Pranks, the pedlar's stories; and Jacky Boucher, the old soldiering man that keeps the lodge-gate at the Hall, told me he believed as our young master was safe to go