She was glad to be assured that her parents had not lingered in agony when they met their fate. She accepted the sailor’s statement regarding drowning quite at its par value. Nevertheless, neither this interview with Benjamin Hardy at the lumber camp nor Aunty Rose’s copious doses of boneset tea cheered the little girl. The excitement of the adventure with the lynx lasted only a few hours. Then the cloud returned to Carolyn May’s countenance and she drooped once more. Miss Minnie noticed it. By this time the sharp-eyed young teacher looked through her spectacles very kindly at the little girl. “What is the trouble with you, Carolyn May?” the teacher asked on one occasion. “You used to be the happiest little girl in The Corners school; and you were brightening up everybody else, too. I don’t like to see you so glum and thoughtful. It isn’t like you. What about your ‘_look up_’ motto, my dear? Have you forgotten it?” “I haven’t forgotten that—oh, no, Miss Minnie. I _couldn’t_ forget that!” the child replied. “I ’spect my papa would be ’shamed of me for losing heart so. But, oh, Miss Minnie! I _do_ get such an empty feeling now when I think of my papa and mamma. And I think of them ’most all the time. It just does seem as though they were going farther and farther away from me ev’ry day!” Miss Minnie took the child in her arms and kissed her. “Faithful little soul!” she murmured. “Time will never heal heart wounds for her.” Miss Amanda understood Carolyn May, too. When the child went to the Parlow house she found sympathy and comfort in abundance. Not that Aunty Rose and Uncle Joe were not sympathetic; but they did not wholly understand the child’s nature. As the winter passed and Carolyn May grew more and more quiet, the hardware dealer and the woman who kept house for him decided that there was nothing the matter with Carolyn May save the natural changes incident to her growing up. For, physically, she was growing fast. As Aunty Rose said to Mr. Stagg, she was “stretching right out of her clothes.” But Carolyn May did not always keep out of mischief, for she was a very human little girl, after all was said and done. Especially was she prone to escapades when she was in the company of Freda Payne, her black-eyed school chum. Trouble seemed to gravitate towards Freda. Not that she was intentionally naughty, but she was too active and too full of curiosity to lead a very placid existence. Wherever Freda was the storm clouds of trouble soon gathered. Carolyn May and Freda were playing one Saturday afternoon in the long shed that connected the blacksmith shop with Mr. Lardner’s house, and Amos Bartlett was with them.