“Have you made no search for her?” he asked.

“I could not believe she would not come back until it began to grow dark.  I thought she could not be far away; Maggie and I hunted through the village, inquiring of every one whom we saw; many of the people were kind, and two or three have gone to hunt for her; I started to do so, but did not go far, when I was sure she had come back while I was away, and I hurried home only to find she was not here.”

“Are you sure any one is looking for her?”

“There are several.”

“Well,” said Harvey, impatient with the vacillation shown by his aunt, “I shall not come back until she is found.”

His hand was on the knob of the door when his distressed relative sprang to her feet.

“Harvey;” she said in a wild, scared manner, “shall I tell you what I believe?”

“Of course.”

“Dollie did not lose herself:  some of those awful men did it.”

“Do you mean the strikers?”

“Yes; they have taken her away to spite you.”

“Impossible!” exclaimed the young man, passing out the door and striding up the single street that ran through the village.

But though unwilling to confess it to himself, the same shocking suspicion had come to him at the moment he learned that Dollie was lost.  Could it be that some of the men, grown desperate in their resentment, had taken this means of mortally injuring him?  Was there any person in the wide world who would harm an innocent child for the sake of hurting a strong man?  Alas, such things had been done, and why should they not be done again?  The words that he overheard between Hugh O’Hara and Tom Hansell proved them capable of dark deeds.  Could it be that some of the hints thrown out by them during that brief interview in the cabin bore any relation to the disappearance of Dollie.

At the moment Harvey turned away from his own house it was his intention to rouse the village and to ask all to join in the hunt for the child, but a feeling of bitter resentment led him to change his purpose.  No; they would rejoice over his sorrow; they would give him no aid, and, if they had had a hand in her taking off, they would do what they could to baffle him in his search.  Slight as was his hope, he would push on alone.

“O’Hara and Hansell know all about it; I will search the neighborhood of the path all the way to their cabin and then compel them to tell what they know; if they refuse——­”

He shut his lips tight and walked faster than ever.  He strove to fight back the tempestuous emotions that set his blood boiling.  He was moved by a resolve that would stop at nothing; he would not believe that there was no hope; he knew he could force the miscreants to give up their secret, and had a hair of his little sister’s head been harmed the punishment should be swift and terrible.

“When Dollie is found,” he muttered, determined to believe she must be restored to him, “I will send her and Aunt Maria away, and then have it out with these fellows; I’ll make them rue the day they began the fight.”