“I don’t know,” answered Lizzie, abashed; “’twas seein’ the rabbit, I think. Did ye notice the rabbit, how he did kick up his little feet and whisk his little tail?” “Most rabbits does that,” commented Jim. On they went, and now the cottage came in sight, the desolate cottage with its smokeless chimney and shuttered windows. “Why it be all shut up,” exclaimed Frizzle, as he stopped before the closed door. “There b’ain’t nobody about, nor yet nothin’ stirrin’.” He gazed towards the empty kennels and the piled up heaps of pens which the keeper had not yet found time to remove. But Lizzie did not heed him; she had risen to her feet and was endeavouring to descend from the cart. “Here, bide a bit, ’ooman, bide a bit. Ye can’t get down by yourself. Wait till I help ye.” He let down the tail-board and assisted her to alight, and Lizzie, staggering towards the door, beat upon it with her open palm. “Oh, I must get in—I must get in,” she cried. “I forgot about door bein’ locked! Oh, what shall I do, what shall I do! He’ll be gone!” “There, there, that’s a job that’s easy managed,” responded Jim, and, applying his vigorous shoulder to the door, he sent it swinging inwards on its hinge. Peering curiously in he saw a dismantled little room, dark, save for the shafts of light which pierced their way through the chinks of the shutters and down the chimney to the fireless grate, and dismantled, save for a clumsy old oak settle which stood near the hearth. But to his surprise Lizzie uttered a cry of rapture, and tottered forward into the room. “I knowed I’d find ye waitin’!” she exclaimed. * * * “I think I’d best look in again on my way back,” said Jim, as he clambered into his cart again after depositing his load at the keeper’s. “I’d no notion the old body was so childish as that. I never thought someway she’d rid house altogether—” “Oh, she’ve shifted for good,” interrupted Keeper Foster. “Her darter came and carried her off, and none too soon either. There’d ha’ been some mischance so sure as anything.” “Well, I thought it a bit queer to find her out on the road so early. She’d had a tumble too, mind ye, one side of her face was all bruised. But ’twasn’t till I heerd her call out, ‘I knowed I’d find ye waitin’,’ in the empty room, that I knowed for certain she’d gone silly.” “You must take her home—along wi’ ye,” said the keeper. “It’s not safe to leave her, and Mrs Caines ’ll be in an awful state. Here, I’ll come with ye, and we’ll persuade her between us.”