“Let me go find Katy,” cried Miss Sally. Katy entered as she spoke, and said a few words to the mistress. “Excuse me.” Mrs. Bogardus rose hastily. She asked Miss Sallie to take her place at the tea-tray. “What is it?” “The boy--they cannot find him. Don't say anything.” She had turned ashy white, and Katy's pretty flushed face had a wild expression. In five minutes the search had begun. Mrs. Bogardus was at the telephone, calling up the quarry, for she was short of men. One order followed another quickly. Her voice was harsh and deep. She had frankly forgotten her guests. Embarrassed by their own uselessness, yet unable to take leave, they lingered and discussed the mystery of this sudden, acute alarm. “It is the sore spot,” said Miss Sally sentimentally. “You know her husband was missing for years before she gave him up; and then that dreadful time, three years ago, when they were so frightened about Paul.” Having spread the alarm, Mrs. Bogardus took the field in person. Her head was bare in the keen, sunset light. She moved with strong, fleet steps, but a look of sudden age stamped her face. “Go back, all of you!” she said to the women, who crowded on her heels. “There are plenty of places to look.” Her stern eyes resisted their frightened sympathy. She was not ready to yield to the consciousness of her own fears. To the old house she went, by some sure instinct that told her the road to trouble. But her trouble stood off from her, and spared her for one moment of exquisite relief; as if the child of Paul and Moya had no part in what was waiting for her. The door at the foot of the stairs stood open. She heard a soft, repeated thud. Panting, she climbed the stairs; and as she rounded the shoulder of the chimney, there, on the top step above her, stood the fair-haired child, making the only light in the place. He was knocking, with his foolish ball, on the door of the chamber of fear. Three generations of the living and the dead were brought together in this coil of fate, and the child, in his happy innocence, had joined the knot. The woman crouching on the stairs could barely whisper, “Middy!” lest if she startled him he might turn and fall. He looked down at her, unsurprised, and paused in his knocking. “Man--in there--won't 'peak to Middy!” he said.