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 And a voice answered, "Jack and Mary can't be found!"

And I riz right up and dressed me, and so did Josiah, I forebodin' all the time, a shadder of the great Onknown seemin' to fall over my mind and heart, as if preparin' me for what wuz to come.

When we got downstairs Tamer wuz in highstericks, and Celestine, forgittin' her art, wuz rushin' round to and fro with a white wrapper on and a whiter face, callin' on little Mary in axents so pitiful it almost seemed it would roust up a dead baby, let alone a lovin', livin' child. Where wuz them strange animals in that hour? They had walked clean away and left her in agony and despair. She seemed to know from the first on't that sunthin' dretful had happened, and so did Tamer. There are awful secrets that mothers learn down in the Valley of Death where they go to claim their babies, they learn things there and keep 'em in their inmost nater, so dost that art or literatoor, however lurid, can't dislodge 'em. They felt what they couldn't explain, hence the highstericks, shriekin', etc.

Hamen and John, though lookin' dretful troubled, kep' on sayin' they wuz hid somewhere, they would be found, all right, they wuz safe, but goin' round at a good jog, nevertheless, tryin' to find 'em. But it wuz my own pardner and myself that found them babies. Alas, for the awful sight! alas, for the woeful sight! Yes, we found 'em.

There wuz a certain place quite a good ways from the house where I knew the children often went to play at keepin' house. An old gnarled willow tree hung over the water, and in its crooked trunk wuz a holler place where they kep' their little dishes and things, and one