GREAT EXCITEMENT

The publication of the advertisement in the paper brought the village
fever of the last two days to its height. Myrtle Hazard's disappearance
had been pretty well talked round through the immediate neighborhood, but
now that forty-eight hours of search and inquiry had not found her, and
the alarm was so great that the young girl's friends were willing to
advertise her in a public journal, it was clear that the gravest
apprehensions were felt and justified. The paper carried the tidings to
many who had not heard it. Some of the farmers who had been busy all the
week with their fields came into the village in their wagons on Saturday,
and there first learned the news, and saw the paper, and the placards
which were posted up, and listened, open-mouthed, to the whole story.

Saturday was therefore a day of much agitation in Oxbow Village, and some
stir in the neighboring settlements. Of course there was a great variety
of comment, its character depending very much on the sense, knowledge,
and disposition of the citizens, gossips, and young people who talked
over the painful and mysterious occurrence.

The Withers Homestead was naturally the chief centre of interest. Nurse
Byloe, an ancient and voluminous woman, who had known the girl when she
was a little bright-eyed child, handed over "the baby" she was holding to
another attendant, and got on her things to go straight up to The
Poplars. She had been holding "the baby" these forty years and more, but
somehow it never got to be more than a month or six weeks old. She
reached The Poplars after much toil and travail. Mistress Fagan, Irish,
house-servant, opened the door, at which Nurse Byloe knocked softly, as
she was in the habit of doing at the doors of those who sent for her.