“Flown!” cried Josiah, rushing after Oliver, as Miss Euphemia joined the party, and Pamela, with Dolly, opened her door across the hall, hearing the commotion.  “And how?  Surely not by the chimney?”

“I wish you had suggested that earlier,” said Oliver bitterly.  “I am a dolt and a fool’s head not to have thoroughly examined it last night,” and he rushed across into Betty’s chamber to find a candle with which to investigate the treacherous exit.

“Have a care, Oliver,” cried Betty, as her brother entered without knocking, to find her with her hair over her shoulders, brush in hand.  “What do you please to want?”

“Your candle,” said Oliver, catching up the one upon her table, and then pausing, as he was about to rush out again.  “Did you hear any noises last night, Betty?”

“Noises?” answered Betty, facing him calmly, “of what nature?”

“In the great chimney,” said Oliver, eying her sternly.

“I did not,” said Betty, with truth, returning inward thanks that to that question she could reply without falsehood.  “Why did you ask?”

“You will find out soon enough,” said Oliver, dashing down the hall, without closing the door, and hurrying to the kitchen for a light.  By the time he returned, he found Josiah half way up the chimney.

“Here are pegs,” he called out, as Oliver sent the ray of the lighted candle upward. “’Tis easy enough to see how our prisoner escaped.  Fool that I was not to have searched this place,” and he let himself down again, where the bewildered group stood around the chimney-piece.

“The fault is mine alone,” cried Oliver furiously; “let us get out on the roof and see if we can discover how he made his descent to the ground.”

“By the great elm,” exclaimed Pamela, who had unfastened the shutters with Josiah’s help; “see, the branches overhang the roof just here, and I think there are some pieces of the bark on the ground below.”  All of which was true, and quick-witted of Pamela; but Moppet could have explained the presence of the bits of bark, for, as it happened, the child had emptied her apron under the elm the day before, and the bark was some she had gathered in the orchard for the bits of fungus which, at night, were phosphorescent, and which Moppet called “fairy lamps.”

“True,” said Josiah, leaning out of the window, “and there are footsteps in the tall grass yonder,” pointing westward, where his keen eye perceived a fresh path broken in the meadow.  “I must follow Oliver to the roof; this will be a dire blow to him, as he thought his prisoner so carefully guarded.”

“How clever of him to escape under our very ears,” said Dolly to Pamela; “how could Captain Yorke contrive to climb down so softly that no one heard him?  Is not Miss Euphemia’s chamber on this side?”

“Yes,” said Pamela, turning away from the window, “and so is Moppet’s; where is Aunt Euphemia?” and running out into the hall, she encountered both Betty and her aunt on the way to Moppet’s apartment.