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264 In an instance that came under our own knowledge, a child of three years old wandered away one morning from its home, and the mother, imagining that it was gone to watch its father at work in the saw-pit, felt no anxiety until her husband came home alone at dinner-time and asked for "little Tommy." It is impossible for words to picture the disordered state of a parent's mind at such a moment, nor will anyone doubt that the poor fellow spoke truth when he told us that those who had lost a child were far from fit persons to conduct the search for it. He and his half-frenzied wife examined, as they thought, every inch of ground for miles around their hut, and their search was continued through so many successive hours that, for a time, the father became blind with the strain upon his sight. In his despair he persuaded a shepherd to drive a flock over the ground near the hut, knowing that the appearance of any unexpected object amongst the brushwood will bring sheep to a sudden halt, and cause them to rush away hurriedly from the spot; but the instinct of the dumb animals and the untiring energy of the parents' love were alike foiled,—weeks grew into months and brought no trace, and the dreary consolation alone remained to them that the heat was so excessive, on the day the child was lost, that its sufferings could not have lasted many hours.

One evening, as the mother sat outside her door, in her own words to me "bewailing as usual," she saw a woman coming towards the hut with her apron thrown over a little box that she was carrying, and, instantly divining its contents, cried out in a distracted manner, before the visitor had reached the threshold, "Them's