MATTIE IN SEARCH. How does the time contrive to steal away from us when we are sitting up, feverish with fear for him, or her, who returns not? The dial that we stare at so often, marks fresh hours, and still further alarms us; but the night is long and tedious, and there's a stab in every tick of that sepulchral clock on the landing. We disguise our alarm from the servants, even from ourselves, and sit down patiently for the coming one--nervous at the footfalls in the streets without, and feeling heart-sick as they pass our door, and die away in the distance. We set our books and newspapers aside at last, and _wait_--we give up pretension to coolness, and watch with our hearts also. Mattie waited, tried to hope, then to pray again; gave up wholly after three in the morning, and cried as for one lost to her for ever. There was a reasonable hope in Harriet having missed the train, or in her having been induced to stay the night at the Eveleighs'; a reasonable fear--in these times of railway mismanagement and error--of an accident having occurred to the up-train. But these hopes and fears were not Mattie's; they flashed by her once or twice, but she felt that Harriet's absence was not to be accounted for by them. At four in the morning she took the big key from the lock, put on her bonnet and shawl, and then paused on the stairs, hesitating in her mind whether to apprise Ann Packet of her new intention or not. Ann Packet would hear a knock if Harriet returned, which was unlikely now; she would not alarm Ann, or betray her friend unnecessarily. It might be necessary, who knows, to keep this ever a secret--she could not tell, all was mystery, dark and unfathomable. "It's not a runaway match, either," thought Mattie, "for there was no occasion to run away, when Harriet and her lover could have married quietly and without any opposition, at least on _their_ side. Harriet knows that, and is not a girl to be led away if she did not. Weak in many ways, but not in that, I know." Mattie disliked mystery. "I'll follow this to the end!" she cried with a stamp of her foot--"to the very end if possible." Mattie might have been spelling over a sensation novel, wherein the hero or heroine--_i.e._ the villain catcher--goes through the last two volumes on the detective principle; and it might have possibly struck her that if the "catcher" had started earlier and gone a less roundabout way to work--certainly a bad way for the volumes!--the matter might have been more expeditiously arranged. She could always see to the end pretty clearly--why not the 'cute-minded party in search? Mattie closed the street-door behind her, and went out into the cold morning. The pavement was still wet and clammy; there was no "drying-air" in the streets, although the stars looked bright and aggravatingly frosty.