Dorcas, her little black face streaming with tears, her breast heaving with sobs, drew the lady, followed by the two gentlemen, toward the door, out of the house, along the locust avenue, and through the great gate leading to the road, which was bordered on the opposite side by a fine piece of woods. “Deh! deh!” she wildly wailed, pointing to a nook under the trees, which was a favorite resort with the children. There were the signs of the children’s late presence and abrupt departure. There on the ground lay Ducky Darling’s adored musical box, dropped and forgotten in her wild woe. There also lay Owlet’s little workbasket, upset, with needle case, scissors, thimble, spools of silk and bright scraps scattered among the weeds and wild flowers. On the road, just in front of the spot, were traces of carriage wheels which had stopped and turned there. “Deh! deh!” still wildly wailed the child. “Deh!—w’ite man!—ta’yidge!—Owly!” Roma began to understand, and a sickening fear seized her heart. “Do you mean,” she inquired, “that a white man carried Owlet away in a carriage?” “’Es-s-s! Oh, ’es-s-s!” “Which way did he go?” “Deh-h-h-h!” howled the child, pointing up the road leading to the village. Roma would not let the poor child see how much shocked, grieved and bewildered she really was. She turned and looked in the faces of her two good friends and supporters. CHAPTER XVI WHO ABDUCTED OWLET? “The child has been abducted,” said Roma, turning very pale, and closing her lips very grimly. Her two companions looked up in alarm. “By whom, in the name of heaven, do you think??” inquired Parson Shaw. “I am not certain,” she replied. “What shall you do?” asked Lawyer Merritt. “Order a carriage, though it will be of little or no use, so far as the recovery of the child is concerned, if she has been carried off by the person whom I suspect,” Roma said, her lip beginning to quiver and her eyes to fill, despite all her firmness. “Whom do you suspect, my dear?” inquired the parson, while the countenance of the lawyer expressed the question which he did not put in words. “There is only one person open to suspicion,” she said. “That dandy devil, Hanson!” exclaimed Mr. Merritt. “Hanson! Yes, there can be little doubt but that he has had me under espionage for a long time past, even while he himself was far away, and has learned, among other facts, my adoption of and affection for this child, and may hope to get a hold on me through my attachment to her. Yet, really, the plan seems so futile, the means so inadequate to the end proposed, as to be quite unworthy of the intelligence even of Hanson. So he may not, after all, have been the abductor.” “But if not Hanson, who then?” demanded Mr. Merritt. “I don’t know. But we are losing precious time. I will go and order the carriage. Will you kindly accompany me to the village, gentlemen?”