While she was speaking the car ran down to the shore of Pine Cove at a beautiful but rather retired spot with an old fish-house and disused wharf in the foreground and, across the placid pool, the sheltering arm of Pine Point, thickly grown with tall pines. Against the wall of the pine wood Lottie's voice echoed back to her with almost uncanny distinctness as she stood in her old place on the wharf. "He-a! he-a! he-a!" she shouted shrilly and sweetly; and back to her came the prompt echo: "'E-a! 'e-a! 'e-a!" "See! he's there yet," she cried, turning to Janice. "Come up here, Janice, and see if he'll answer you. Mr. Haley says there are echoes everywhere; but I don't believe there is a single one as nice as mine." Janice came, laughing. "What shall I say to your friend?" she asked. "Oh! you must not call what I do, of course. You shout somebody's name--somebody you love," the child advised. Instantly Janice opened her lips and expelled toward the wooded point: "Nelson!" "'Elson!" shot back the echo. "Of course," cried Lottie, dancing up and down in her satisfaction. "He knows Mr. Haley. But shout somebody's name he doesn't know." "Here comes Mr. Thomas Drew's sloop, Lottie," Janice said as the big sailing vessel on which she had several times sailed on fishing excursions shot into the cove before a favoring wind. "Oh! how pretty!" cried the little girl. "And what a big sail. He's going to drop anchor where he usually does--see!" The sloop swept majestically between the old wharf and the pine wood where the echo "lived." "Now, Janice!" urged Lottie, "shout again. Call a name my echo doesn't know." And Janice, still smiling, cried aloud: "Daddy! Daddy!" No repetition of the call came back from the wall of pine wood. Lottie seized her friend's hand almost in fear. "Oh! he doesn't answer! He doesn't know your father, Janice Day." Then, awestruck, she put a question that stabbed Janice to the quick: "Do--do you suppose anything real _bad_ has happened to your father 'way down there in Mexico?" Afterwards, Janice realized that the big sail of the sloop, flattened as it crossed between the wharf and the distant wood, had caught her voice and held it, echoless. Nevertheless the odd occurrence engendered in her heart a fear of impending peril. She began to worry again about Broxton Day. She counted the days that must elapse before she could possibly hear from her father in reply to the letter she had written about her Uncle Jason's difficulties. The Day homestead on Hillside Avenue no longer housed a happy and contented family. It grew very difficult for Janice, even, to be cheerful. And Marty positively seemed to have lost his whistle. Janice tried her best to don a sprightly air; but she observed her uncle and aunt and Marty sometimes whispering together and watching her; and this made her feel uncomfortable.