YES--she was gone--there could be no doubt about it--there was no room for hope, no chance of some mistake--the scrap of paper, with its single word ‘Good-bye,’ contained enough information to insure a terrible certainty. She had gone to her room that evening to lie down, as she said, whilst her mother was occupied with needlework in her own, and had stolen away so softly, silently, that her mother had not heard her footsteps on the stairs. To whom she was gone--if indeed it was to some person she had fled--in what direction, with what object, remained unknown; some hours must have passed after her flight had taken place before her mother discovered the paper she had left. Jenny kept on repeating in a pitiful, helpless tone that she had sewed downstairs for hour after hour, until she became ‘skeared’ that Annie did not appear, and went to her room, and found that she was gone. It was pitiful to see the condition of the mother, crushed and bewildered, without strength enough left for any other feeling than that Annie, her Annie, had really left her home. To Nat it was all a sudden, dreadful nightmare, the one candle in the cottage, the stillness of the night, the single word that his sister’s hand had left, the white face of his mother, and the overwhelming sense of shame. It could not be borne; he left his home and his mother, and with some muttered words about making inquiries, went out into the darkness. That was not a night to be forgotten by mother or by son, the short summer night spent in this new suffering; by Jenny sitting helplessly in her chair, whilst the dying candle before her sunk and flickered; by Nat in wanderings as hopeless and as helpless, and in vain enquiries which revealed to others their disgrace. He questioned such passers-by as could be found in the streets at midnight; he roused the inhabitants of one or two cottages; he ran through the night to the two nearest village-stations, and found his way by the river to the stations in the town. The hours of the night seemed short, and yet seemed crowded, too quickly over, and yet long to endlessness; its shifting scenes, and the faces of those he questioned, remained with him afterwards as bewildered dreams. By the grey morning-light that broke above the river, he found his way back again to his home at last, in some desperate hope that when he turned the handle of the door he would find that his sister also had returned. He entered to find everything as he had left it, the candle burnt out, the cottage dim and silent; his mother in her chair, pale, sleepless, motionless, and the bit of paper on the table in front of her. He was worn out; it was all too hard to bear; he sat down and cried.