She was climbing Franklin Mountain. The snowy
pine boughs bent so low that they brushed her head. She stepped deeply
into the untrodden snow; the train of her green polonaise dipped into
it, and swept it along. And all the time she was peering through those
white fairy columns and arches for--a Christmas-tree.
That night, the mountain had turned rosy, and faded, and the stars were
coming out, when a frantic woman, panting, crying out now and then in
her distress, went running down the road to the Munroe house. It was the
only one between her own and the mountain. The woman rained some
clattering knocks on the door--she could not stop for the bell. Then she
burst into the house, and threw open the dining-room door, crying out in
gasps:
"Hev you seen her? Oh, hev you? My Jenny's lost! She's lost! Oh, oh, oh!
They said they saw her comin' up this way, this mornin'. _Hev_ you seen
her, _hev_ you?"
Earl and his father and mother were having tea there in the handsome
oak-panelled dining-room. Mr. Munroe rose at once, and went forward,
Mrs. Munroe looked with a pale face around her silver tea-urn, and Earl
sat as if frozen. He heard his father's soothing questions, and the
mother's answers. She had been out at work all day; when she returned,
Jenny was gone. Some one had seen her going up the road to the Munroes'
that morning about ten o'clock. That was her only clew.
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