“Keep it there; it feels soft, like ’Leny’s,” said Mrs. Nichols, the tears gushing out at this little act of sympathy.

Meantime, Mr. Livingstone, after a short consultation with his wife, hurried off to the neighbors, none of whom knew aught of the fugitive, and all of whom offered their assistance in searching.  Never once did it occur to Mr. Livingstone that she might have taken the cars, for that he knew would need money, and he supposed she had none in her possession.  By a strange coincidence, too, the depot agent who sold her the ticket, left the very next morning for Indiana, where he had been intending to go for some time, and where he remained for more than a week, thus preventing the information which he could otherwise have given concerning her flight.  Consequently, Mr. Livingstone returned each night, weary and disheartened, to his home, where all the day long his mother moaned and wept, asking for her ’Lena.

At last, as day after day went by and brought no tidings of the wanderer, she ceased to ask for her, but whenever a stranger came to the house, she would whisper softly to them, “’Leny’s dead.  I killed her; did you know it?” at the same time passing to them the crumpled note, which she ever held in her hand.

’Lena was a general favorite in the neighborhood which had so recently denounced her, and when it became known that she was gone, there came a reaction, and those who had been the most bitter against her now changed their opinion, wondering how they could ever have thought her guilty.  The stories concerning her visits to Captain Atherton’s were traced back to their source, resulting in exonerating her from all blame, while many things, hitherto kept secret, concerning Anna’s engagement, were brought to light, and ’Lena was universally commended for her efforts to save her cousin from a marriage so wholly unnatural.  Severely was the captain censured for the part he had taken in deceiving Anna, a part which he frankly confessed, while he openly espoused the cause of the fugitive.

Mrs. Livingstone, on the contrary, was not generous enough to make a like confession.  Public suspicion pointed to her as the interceptor of Anna’s letters, and though she did not deny it, she wondered what that had to do with ’Lena, at the same time asking “how they expected to clear up the Graham affair.”

This was comparatively easy, for in the present state of feeling the neighborhood were willing to overlook many things which had before seemed dark and mysterious, while Mrs. Graham, for some most unaccountable reason, suddenly retracted almost everything she had said, acknowledging that she was too hasty in her conclusions, and evincing for the missing girl a degree of interest perfectly surprising to Mrs. Livingstone, who looked on in utter astonishment, wondering what the end would be.  About this time Durward returned, greatly pained at the existing state of things.  In Frankfort,