“My ease!” cried Molly bitterly, “I’d be gladder than words can tell to change places with you for awhile.”

“Humph! you don’t know what you’re wishing; the way I have to worry over my sewing for four besides myself, is enough to try the patience of a saint.  By the way, it’s high time you began to make yourself useful in that line.  With practice, you might soon learn to accomplish a great deal, having nothing to do but stick at it from morning to night.”

Molly was in the act of buttoning the second glove.  Tears sprang to her eyes at this evidence of her mother’s heartlessness, and one bright drop fell on Enna’s wrist.

“There you have stained my glove!” she exclaimed angrily.  “What a baby you are! will you never have done with this continued crying?”

“It seems to be very easy for you to bear my troubles, mother,” returned poor Molly, raising her head proudly, and dashing away the tears, “I will try to learn to bear them too, and never again appeal to my mother for sympathy.”

“You get enough of that from Dick, he cares ten times as much for you as he does for me—­his own mother.”

At that moment Betty came running in.  “Mother, the carriage is at the door, and grandpa’s ready.  Molly, grandpa says he’ll take you too, if you want to go.”

Molly’s face brightened, but before she could speak, Enna answered for her.  “No, she can’t; there isn’t time to get her ready.”

Mrs. Johnson hurried from the room, Betty following close at her heels, and Molly was left alone in her grief and weariness.

She watched the carriage as it rolled down the avenue, then turning from the window, indulged in a hearty cry.

At length, exhausted by her emotion, she laid her head back and fell asleep in her chair.

How long she had slept she did not know; some unusual noise down-stairs woke her, and the next moment Betty rushed in screaming, “Oh, Molly, Molly, mother and grandfather’s killed; both of ’em!  Oh, dear! oh, dear!”

For an instant Molly seemed stunned, she scarcely comprehended Betty’s words, then as the child repeated, “They’re killed! they’re both killed; the horses ran away and threw ’em out,” she too uttered a cry of anguish, and grasping the arms of her chair, made desperate efforts to rise; but all in vain, and with a groan she sank back, and covering her face with her hands, shed the bitterest tears her impotence had ever yet cost her.

Betty had run away again, and she was all alone.  Oh, how hard it was for her to be chained there in such an agony of doubt and distress!  She forcibly restrained her groans and sobs, and listened intently.

The Conlys, except Cal, were still at the North; the house seemed strangely quiet, only now and then a stealthy step or a murmur of voices and occasionally a half smothered cry from Bob or Betty.

A horseman came dashing furiously up the avenue.  It was her uncle, Mr. Horace Dinsmore.  He threw himself from the saddle and hurried into the house, and the next minute two more followed at the same headlong pace.