When Betty came back from her interview with Aunt Dinah she brought with her a piece of hot corn-bread; "I thought you might like a taste of it," she said. Mrs. Kirby was very glad to get it; she sat breaking off small fragments and eating them carefully--Mrs. Rutherford would have said that she nibbled. "Yes, the _sweetest_ thing!" continued Betty, seating herself broadly in an arm-chair, and searching again for her handkerchief. "Let me see--you and the Doctor started down here about midnight, didn't you? Well, of course we didn't feel like going to bed, of course, not knowing _where_ our poor dear child might be, and so I went over and sat with Penelope Moore; and Mr. Moore _very_ often went down to the gate, and indeed a good deal of the time he stayed out on the plaza; Telano's coming up from here had let everybody know what had happened, and many others sat up besides ourselves, and some of the servants got together with torches and went out on the barren to look, only Mr. Moore wouldn't organize a _regular_ search, because he supposed that was being done here under the Doctor's directions, he never dreamed you hadn't got here at all! At length, when it was nearly three, Mr. Moore came in and said that he thought we had better go to bed and get what sleep we _could_; that we should only be _perfectly_ useless and exhausted the next day if we sat up all night" (here little Mrs. Kirby heaved a noiseless sigh); "and so I went home, and _did_ go to bed, but more to occupy the time than anything else, for of course it was simply _impossible_ to sleep, anxious as I was. But I must have dropped off, after all, I reckon, because it was just dawn when Cynthy came up to tell me that Mr. Moore was down-stairs; I _rushed_ down, and he said that Marcos Finish, the livery-stable man, had been to the rectory to say that Bartolo Johnson had come to his house a short time before, knocked him up, and told him that the northern gentleman and Garda were ten miles out on the barren, and that he had been sent in to bring out a carriage for them. He confessed--Bartolo--that he ought to have been there _hours_ before, as the gentleman had sent him in on his own horse not much past eight in the evening. But, on the way, he had to pass the cabin of one of his _friends_, he said--a nice friend, that wild, drinking Joe Tasteen!--and Joe stopped him, and he intended to stay only a moment, of course, which soon became many minutes as the foolish boy lay on the floor in a drunken sleep, while two of Joe's hangers-on, though not actually Joe himself, I believe, made off with the horse. Of course it was a regular plot, and I'm afraid Mr. Winthrop will never see _that_ horse again! When Bartolo _did_ at last wake up, he came in to Gracias as fast as he could scamper, and went straight to Marcos's place and told all about it--the only redeeming feature in _his_ part of the affair--and Marcos got out his carriage, and sent one of his best