He grinned as he pictured Abe's dismay on returning to the Station to find him gone. Still, he reflected, maybe Abe would have a better time alone with the young fellows; he had grown so plagued young himself all of a sudden. Samuel surely need not worry about him. More and more good-natured grew Samuel's face, until a sociable rabbit, peeping at him from behind a bush, decided to run a race with the old gentleman, and hopped fearlessly out into the open. "Ah, yew young rascal!" cried Samuel. "Yew're the feller that eat up all my winter cabbages." At this uncanny reading of his mind, Mr. Cottontail darted off into the woods again to seek out his mate and inform her that their guilt had been discovered. Finally, Samuel came to the break in the woodland, an open field of rye, green as springtime grass, and his own exquisitely neat abode beckoning across the gray rail-fence to him. How pretty Blossy's geraniums looked in the sitting-room windows! Even at this distance, too, he could see that she had not forgotten to water his pet abutilon and begonias. How welcome in the midst of this flurry of snow--how welcome to his eye was that smoke coming out of the chimneys! All the distress of his trip away from home seemed worth while now for the joy of coming back. Before he had taken down the fence-rail and turned into the path which led to his back door, he was straining his ears for the sound of Blossy's voice gossiping with Angy. Not hearing it, he hurried the faster. The kitchen door was locked. The key was not under the mat; it was not in the safe on the porch, behind the stone pickle-pot. He tried the door again, and then peered in at the window. Not even the cat could be discerned. The kitchen was set in order, the breakfast dishes put away, and there was no sign of any baking or preparations for dinner. He knocked, knocked loudly. No answer. He went to a side door, to the front entrance, and found the whole house locked, and no key to be discovered. It was still early in the morning, earlier than Blossy would have been likely to set out upon an errand or to spend the day; and then, too, she was not one to risk her health in such chilly, damp weather, with every sign of a heavy storm. Samuel became alarmed. He called sharply, "Blossy!" No answer. "Mis' Rose!" No answer. "Ezra!" And still no sound in reply. His alarm increased. He went to the barn; that was locked and Ezra nowhere in sight. By standing on tiptoe, however, and peeping through a crack in the boards, he found that his horse and the two-seated surrey were missing. "Waal, I never," grumbled Samuel, conscious once more of all his physical discomforts. "The minute my back's turned, they go a-gallivantin'. I bet yer," he added after a moment's thought, "I bet yer it's that air Angy Rose. She's got ter git an' gad every second same as Abe, an' my poor wife has been drug along with her."