Taking Helen by the hand she crossed the rustic bridge; but as she approached the green, she slackened her pace and drew her spectacles over her eyes. Then taking them off and rubbing them with her silk handkerchief, she put them on again and stood still, stooping forward, and gazing like one bewildered. "Where is the thread, Miss Thusa?" exclaimed Helen, running before her, and springing on the slope. "When did you take it away?" "Take it away!" cried she. "Take it away! I never _did_ take it away. But _somebody_ has taken it--stolen it, carried it off, every skein of it--not a piece left the length of my finger, my finger nail. The vile thieves!--all my winter's labor--six long months' work--dead and buried! for all me--" "Poor Miss Thusa!" said Helen, in a pitying accent. She was afraid to say more--there was something so awe-inspiring in the mingled wrath and grief of Miss Thusa's countenance. "What's the matter?" cried a spirited voice. Louis appeared on the bridge, swinging his hat in the air, his short, thick curls waving in the breeze. "Somebody's stolen all Miss Thusa's thread," exclaimed Helen, running to meet him, "her nice thread, that was just white enough to put away. Only think, Louis, how wicked!" "Oh! Miss Thusa, it can't be stolen," said Louis, coming to the spot where she stood, the image of indignant despair; "somebody has hidden it to tease you. I'll help you to find it." This seemed so natural a supposition, that Miss Thusa's iron features relaxed a little, and she glanced round the enclosure, more in condescension than hope, surveying the boughs of the lilacs, drooping with their weight of purple blossoms, and peering at the gossamer's web. Louis, in the meantime, turned towards the stream, now partially enveloped in the dusky shade of twilight, but there was one spot sparkling with the rosy light of sunset, and resting snugly 'mid the pebbles at the bottom, he spied a large, dingy ball. "Ah! what's this big toad-stool, rising up in the water?" said he, seizing a pole that lay under the bridge, and sticking the end in the ball. "Why this looks as if it had been thread, Miss Thusa, but I don't know what you will call it now?" Miss Thusa snatched the dripping ball from the pole that bent beneath its weight, turned it round several times, bringing it nearer and nearer to her eyes at each revolution, then raised it above her head, as if about to dash it on the ground; but suddenly changing her resolution, she tightened her grasp, and strode into the path leading to the house. "I know all about it now," she cried, "I heard the children romping and trampling round the house like a drove of wild colts, with Mittie at their head; it is she that has done it, and if I don't punish her, it will be because the Lord Almighty does it for me."