“It’s lonesome business,” said he aloud, “being pa and ma and all the children just by yourself. Looks hoggish, now, don’t it? I wish I’d divided up and just been the man of the house, and let some other folks take the rest of the parts. I’m a no-count old fool, anyhow. No one but a plumb idiot would ’a’ let that there girl be snatched away like that yesterday. A blamed, sapless old fool, that’s what I be! Me with nothing but a fiddle to give me an excuse for living! For my farming would make you sick to look at. The neighbors snigger when they see it. Well, what do you think of that now, for a man to reach my age and have nothing but a fiddle that he cares for!” He flung out of bed in disgust, whipped into his old clothes, lighted the fire—which proceeded to smoke badly—and got out his bacon and his bag of meal. “I’m just plumb tired of cooking alone,” he announced to a squirrel that paused for a moment before his door, sitting erect on his haunches and casting a wistful glance from his bright eyes. Haystack tossed him some ground nuts which he kept in a bag for that purpose, and then turned angrily to his own meal. Halfway through it, he laid down his knife and fork, and a light broke over his face. “I know what I’ll do,” he said, “I’ll go find that little lass. I’ll make myself of some use, that’s what I’ll do. See here, Betsy,” he went on, turning to his violin and speaking to it as if it were a little sister, “you and me’ll start out and find that there poor lass, you hear? We’ve been playing stick-in-the-mud about long enough. What we need is to get a move on us and to go out and see something of the world. What you say, Bet?” Just then a log fell on the hearth, and from Betsy’s answering strings came forth a delicate wail. Haystack took it to mean that they should go, and when he had made his cabin tidy—and he took much more pains with it than usual—he put on clean homespun, packed a change of clothing in a square of blue denim, fastened this to a stick which he threw over his shoulder, and taking Betsy under the other arm, started out on a quest. At about the same time the sheriff at Lee and Pa McBirney and Mr. Carson and Elder Mills and Mr. Pickett and a great many other persons were bestirring themselves to the same end. They telegraphed here and they telephoned there, and all over the county the good neighbors were keeping an outlook. Ma McBirney and Mrs. Carson kept together and talked over this and that phase of the matter, and both of them poured out their kind hearts in good wishes, as if their love would build a wall around the lost child to keep her from harm. “Let no evil touch her, dear Lord,” prayed Mary McBirney over and over again. “Thy power is everywhere, and Thy love is all protecting. Spread Thy love about her like a cloak and keep her from harm.”