"You don't mean Louis and Richard have run away?" demanded David. "Both their guns and their powder-horns and shot-bags are gone," said Abner. "They would have taken them anyway," said Louis. "The chest in Louis's chamber is unlocked and the money he kept in the till is gone, and his fiddle is gone, and the cider-brandy and wormwood bottle to bathe his arm with, and two shoulders of pork out of the cellar, and a sack of potatoes, and the blankets off his and Richard's beds are gone too," said Abner. He began to move towards the house. His father made a bound after him and grasped his arm. "What do you mean?" he cried out. "What do you think they've run away for?" "Know as much as I do," replied Abner. He wrenched his arm away and strode on towards the house. Then David Hautville and his son Eugene stood looking at each other with a surmise of horror growing in their eyes. "What does he mean?" David whispered, hoarsely. Eugene shook his head. Presently Eugene went into the barn and fell to feeding the roan mare, and David plunged heavily back to the house. He and Abner sat one on each side of the fire and furtively watched Madelon preparing supper. She spoke never a word. Her red lips were a red line of resolution. Her despairing eyes were fixed upon her work without a glance for either of them. However, when supper was set on the table, and she had blown the horn at the door and waited, and nobody else came, she turned with sudden life upon her father and her brothers, who had already begun to taste the smoking hasty-pudding. "Where are the others?" she cried out, shrilly. "Where are Louis and Richard?" The men glanced at one another under sullen eyelids, but nobody answered. "Where are they?" she repeated. "You know as much about it as we do," Eugene said, then, in his soft voice. Madelon stood with wild eyes flashing from one to another. Then she gave a sudden spring out of the room, and they heard her swift feet on the chamber-stairs. The men ate their hasty-pudding, bending their brows over it as if it were a witches' mess instead of their ordinary home fare. Madelon came back so rapidly that she seemed to fly over the stairs. They scarcely heard the separate taps of her feet. She burst into the room and faced them in a sort of fury. "They have gone!" she gasped out. "Louis and Richard have gone! Where are they?" David Hautville slowly shook his head. Then he took another spoonful of pudding. The brothers bent with stern assiduity over their bowls. "You have hid them away!" shrieked Madelon. "You have hid them away lest Louis own that he saw blood on my hand, and Richard that he gave me his knife! What have you done with them?" Not one of the three men spoke. They swallowed their pudding. "Father! Abner! Eugene!" said Madelon, "tell me what you have done with my brothers, who can testify that I killed Lot Gordon, and save Burr?"