What did it all mean? They were equally perplexed by the mystery and distressed by Rose’s evident grief. Mrs. Patience drew off her things and tried to calm her with soothing words; Miss Silence brought the camphor bottle—her remedy for all ills. But Rose only cried the harder till Mrs. Blossom kindly, but with the authority that comes of a calm and self-controlled nature, said, “Rose, you _must_ stop crying, and tell us what is the trouble.” Then choking back her sobs Rose lifted her tear-swollen face and exclaimed, “Oh, Mrs. Blossom, Mr. Fifield says I have taken a hundred dollars! A hundred dollars in gold! And I don’t know one thing more about it than you do, but he won’t believe me, and he calls me a thief, and everybody will think I am awful, when I want to be good, and was trying so hard to do my best. What shall I do?” and she wrung her hands with a gesture of utter despair. Further questioning at last brought a connected story, from which it appeared that Nathan Fifield had a hundred dollars in gold, that from some whim he had put for safe keeping in the parlor stove. That morning, going around the house to tie up a loose vine, he had glanced through the parlor window and seen Rose at the stove with the door open. And when, his suspicion aroused, he had looked for the money it had been to find it gone, and at once had accused Rose of the theft. “And he says I showed guilt when I saw him,” Rose wailed, “and I did start, for I was frightened to see a face looking in at the window, and with the snow on the glass I didn’t know at first who it was.” “But what were you in the parlor, and at the stove for?” questioned Mrs. Blossom. “I was dusting the front hall and the parlor. Miss Fifield sweeps the parlor once a month and I dust it every week, though I don’t see the need, for those are all the times anybody ever goes into it. Some feathers came out of the duster, it’s old and does shed feathers, and I had opened the stove door to throw them in. I didn’t know there was ever any money in a little leather bag in there; I never dreamed of such a thing. And if I had I shouldn’t have touched it. Madam Sharpe always trusted me with her purse, and I never took a penny from her. I’m not a thief, if he does say that I am. But they won’t believe me. Miss Eudora is just as certain, and I shall have to go to jail, for I can’t tell where the money is.” “Poor child!” and Grandmother Sweet stroked the head that had gone down in Mrs. Patience’s lap. “It is borne on my mind,” and she glanced around the little group, “that Rose is wholly innocent, and that mindful of her youth and inexperience it were well for some of us to see Neighbor Fifield if an explanation of the mystery cannot be found.