With a great cracking of whips and creaking of wheels the spectral party drove off, to the tune of “Good-night, ladies, we’re going to leave you now.”  Far down the road the chorus came floating back to the listeners on the porch, “Merrily we roll along, roll along, roll along.”

“Wasn’t it funny?” yawned Lloyd, as she went sleepily up the stairs.  “But oh, I’m so tiahed.  I believe if they had stayed much longah, I’d have fallen ovah in a heap on the flo’.”

All the lights were out down-stairs, and the girls were nearly undressed, when they were surprised to hear one of the wagonettes coming back.  A frantic clang of the knocker on the front door brought them all to the windows.

“Oh, Mrs. Sherman!” cried an agonised voice out of the darkness, that they recognised as Mrs. Cassidy’s, “are the twins here?  Bethel and Ethel?  We can’t find them anywhere.  I was sure that I lifted them into the wagonette myself, but every one was so disguised that I must have mistaken somebody else’s children for mine.”

“They are not in either wagonette,” added Rob Moore’s voice.  “We never thought to count noses until we reached the Cassidy place, and then we found they were missing.”

Hastily slipping into a wrapper, Mrs. Sherman ran down-stairs with a candle in her hand, and opened the front door.  Plump little Mrs. Cassidy was standing there, wringing her hands.

“Oh, don’t tell me that they are not here!” she cried.  “Didn’t you see them when you were locking up the house after we left?  Then I know they’re lost.  They must have slipped away from the porch before the storm came up, and were playing outside somewhere when we all ran inside and shut the door.  Oh, my babies!” she wailed.  “If they were out in all that awful storm it has killed them, I know.  Oh, why did I do such a foolish thing as to bring them?  They were too little to come, I knew that.  But they begged so hard, and they looked so cute in those little ruffled pillow-cases, that I hadn’t the heart to refuse.  Oh, what shall I do?”

“They must be somewhere about the house,” said Mrs. Sherman, with such decision that Mrs. Cassidy was comforted, and began wiping her eyes.

“Come in, and help me search.  Maybe they slipped up-stairs when the other children were playing, and went to sleep in some dark corner.  Come on, boys.  Light up the house from attic to cellar, and see who will be first to find them.  It will be a game of hunt the twins, instead of hunt the slipper.”

Then up-stairs, and down-stairs, and in my lady’s chamber, went a strange procession, for nearly every one was still draped in sheet and pillow-case.  Into closets, behind screens, in all the corners, and under all the beds they looked.  Keith, remembering the sad story of Ginevra, even lifted the lid of every chest and trunk in the linen room.  Poor little Mrs. Cassidy followed, wringing her hands, and sobbing that she knew that they had been shut outside in the storm and the night.  Suddenly, when they had been all over the house for the third time, she caught up a lamp, and ran out in the dark, like some poor mad creature, calling, “Oh, Bethel!  Oh, my little Ethel!  Don’t you hear your mother?”