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 Nattie is safe and well, and will before long return to us.

"I hope you are right, Miss Susan," said Biddy, lifting off the potato kettle; "but to think it was only yesterday that she was here with the same blessed dinner-pot in her two little hands! Shure, it seems a wake since then. Throuble makes long days, don't it, Miss Susan?"

Mr. Stone now came in, and his wife took him aside to tell him that the crier had been on their street, and her mother had heard enough to understand that some person was lost.

"You had better not go into her room while the incident is fresh in her mind," said the wife, "for I fear that she will ask you directly if you know who is missing? I have had to evade her questions as best I could, and am getting tired of their concealment. I hope father will arrive before another evening, for I would rather that he should break the tidings to her than to perform the task myself."