“No, they ain’t,” returned David, with his eyes still on Abner’s face.

“Sure they ain’t up chamber?”

“No; I was home a good half-hour before Madelon came.  There wasn’t a soul in the house, and nobody could have come home since without my knowing it.”

“They didn’t come home this noon either,” said Eugene.

“Thought you said they’d gone to see to their traps on West Mountain?” David rejoined.

“Thought they had when they didn’t come.”  Eugene turned impatiently on Abner.  “Where do you think they’ve gone—­what do you mean by looking so?” he cried.

Abner dug his heel into the snow.  “Don’t know,” he returned, in a surly voice.

“What do you suspect, then?  Good God! can’t you speak out?”

Abner’s features were heavier than his brother’s—­his speech and manner slower.  He paused a second, even then; then he turned towards the house, and spoke, with his face away from them, with a curious directness and taciturnity.  “Didn’t go to the traps on West Mountain,” he said, then; “went there myself.  They hadn’t been there—­no tracks; was home before father was to-night.  Louis and Richard hadn’t come.  Went down to the village; hadn’t been there.”

“You don’t mean Louis and Richard have run away?” demanded David.

“Both their guns and their powder-horns and shot-bags are gone,” said Abner.

“They would have taken them anyway,” said Louis.

“The chest in Louis’s chamber is unlocked and the money he kept in the till is gone, and his fiddle is gone, and the cider-brandy and wormwood bottle to bathe his arm with, and two shoulders of pork out of the cellar, and a sack of potatoes, and the blankets off his and Richard’s beds are gone too,” said Abner.  He began to move towards the house.

His father made a bound after him and grasped his arm.  “What do you mean?” he cried out.  “What do you think they’ve run away for?”

“Know as much as I do,” replied Abner.  He wrenched his arm away and strode on towards the house.  Then David Hautville and his son Eugene stood looking at each other with a surmise of horror growing in their eyes.

“What does he mean?” David whispered, hoarsely.

Eugene shook his head.

Presently Eugene went into the barn and fell to feeding the roan mare, and David plunged heavily back to the house.  He and Abner sat one on each side of the fire and furtively watched Madelon preparing supper.

She spoke never a word.  Her red lips were a red line of resolution.  Her despairing eyes were fixed upon her work without a glance for either of them.

However, when supper was set on the table, and she had blown the horn at the door and waited, and nobody else came, she turned with sudden life upon her father and her brothers, who had already begun to taste the smoking hasty-pudding.  “Where are the others?” she cried out, shrilly.  “Where are Louis and Richard?”