“Stephen!” she called irritably, running upstairs. Was there anything more exasperating than to have a child not answer when you called? Helen and Henry had never _dreamed_ of that when they had been his age. It was another one of his naughty tricks, a new one! He had a new one every day. And he always knew just when was the worst possible time to try one on. The water in her scrubbing pail was cooling off all the time and she had just filled up the reservoir of the kitchen stove with cold, so that she couldn’t have another pailful of hot for an hour. “Stephen!” The thought of the cooling water raised the heat of her resentment against the child. She looked hastily into the spotless bathroom, the bedroom where Stephen’s smooth white cot stood by his parents’ bed, into Henry’s little dormer-windowed cubby-hole--there! Henry had left his shoes in the middle of the floor again!--into Helen’s room where a great bias fold in the badly made bed deepened the line between her eyes. Still no Stephen. It was too much. With all she had to do, slaving day and night to keep the house nice for them all who never thought of appreciating it, never any rest or change, her hair getting thinner all the time, simply coming out by handfuls, and she had had such beautiful hair, so many things to do this afternoon while Mattie was out, enjoying herself, riding in a new car, and now everything stopped because of this naughty trick of Stephen’s of not answering. “Stephen!” she screamed, her face darkly flushed. “Tell me where you are this minute!” In that tiny house he must be quite within earshot. But the tiny house sent back not the faintest murmur of response. The echo of her screaming voice died away to a dead silence that closed in on her menacingly and laid on her feverish, angry heart the cold touch of terror. Suppose that Stephen were not hiding from her! Suppose he had stepped out into the yard a moment and had been carried away. There had been those rough-looking men loitering in the streets yesterday--tramps from the railroad yards.... Oh, and the railroad yards so close! Mrs. Elmore’s little Harry killed there by a freight-train. Or the river! Standing there in the dark upper hall, she saw Stephen’s little hands clutching wildly at nothing and going down under that dreadful, cold, brown water. Stephen, her baby, her darling, the strongest and brightest of them all, her favorite.... She flew down the stairs and out the front door into the icy February air, calling wildly: “Stephen! Stevie! Stevie, darling!” But the dingy street was quite empty save for a grocer’s wagon standing in front of one of the little clapboarded houses. She ran down to this and asked the boy driving it: “Have you seen Stephen since you turned into the street? You know, little Stephen Knapp?” “No, I ain’t seen him,” said the boy, looking up and down the street with her. A thin old woman came out on the front porch of the house next to the Knapp’s.