and up the road; she had invaded all the neighbors’ houses, insisting upon looking through their farthest and most unlikely closets; she had even penetrated to the woods, and joined wild-eyed the groups of peering workers on the shore of the nearest pond.  That she could not endure long, so she had rushed home to her sister, who was either pacing her sitting-room with inarticulate murmurs and wails of distress in the sympathizing ears of several of the neighboring women, or else was staring with haggard eyes of fearful hope from a window.  When she looked from the eastern window she could see her mother-in-law, Mrs. Zelotes Brewster, at an opposite one, sitting immovable, with her Bible in her lap, prayer in her heart, and an eye of grim holding to faith upon the road for the fulfilment of promise.  She felt all her muscles stiffen with anger when she saw the wild eyes of the child’s mother at the other window.  “It is all her fault,” she said to herself—­“all her fault—­hers and that bold trollop of a sister of hers.”  When she saw Eva run down the road, with her black hair rising like a mane to the morning wind, she was an embodiment of an imprecatory psalm.  When, later on, she saw the three editors coming—­Mr. Walsey, of The Spy, and Mr. Jones, of The Observer, and young Joe Bemis, of The Star, on his bicycle—­she watched jealously to see if they were admitted.  When Fanny’s head disappeared from the eastern window she knew that Eva had let them in and Fanny was receiving them in the parlor.  “She will tell them all about the words they had last night, that made the dear child run away,” she thought.  “All the town will know what doings there are in our family.”  Mrs. Zelotes made up her mind to a course of action.  Each editor was granted a long audience with Fanny and Eva, who entertained them with hysterical solemnity and displayed Ellen’s photographs in the red plush album, from the last, taken in her best white frock, to one when she was three weeks old, and seeming weakly and not likely to live.  This had been taken by a photographer summoned to the house at great expense.  “Her father has never spared expense for Ellen,” said Fanny, with an outburst of grief.  “That’s so,” said Eva.  “I’ll testify to that.  Andrew Brewster never thought anything was too good for that young one.”  Then she burst out with a sob louder than her sister’s.  Eva had usually a coarsely well-kempt appearance, her heavy black hair being securely twisted, and her neck ribbons tied with smart jerks of neatness; but to-day her hair was still in the fringy braids of yesterday, and her cotton blouse humped untidily in the back.  Her face was red and her lips swollen; she looked like a very bacchante of sorrow, and as if she had been on some mad orgy of grief.