with a start. Her heart was beating fast. She thought of Maggie's
exquisite face. She remembered it as she had seen it that night when
they were sitting by the fire, as she had seen it last, when it turned
so white and the eyes blazed at her in anger.

Priscilla stretched out her hand for a box of matches. She would light
her candle, and, as there was no chance of her going to sleep, sit up,
put her dressing-jacket on and begin to write a long letter home to
Aunt Raby and to her little sisters. Such methodical work would calm
nerves not often so highly strung.

She rose, and fetching her neat little leather writing-case from where
she had placed it on the top of her bureau, prepared to open it.

The little case was locked. Priscilla went over to her curtained
wardrobe, pushed it aside and felt in the pocket of the dress she had
worn that day for her purse. It was not there. Within that purse the
little key was safely hiding, but the purse itself was nowhere to be
found.

Priscilla looked all around the room. In vain; the neat brown-leather
purse, which held the key, some very precious memoranda of different
sorts and her small store of worldly wealth, was nowhere to be found.

She stood still for a moment in perplexity. All her nervous fears had
now completely vanished; a real calamity and a grave one stared her in
the face. Suppose her purse were gone? Suppose it had been stolen? The
very small supply of money which that purse contained was most
precious to Priscilla. It seemed to her that nothing could well be
more terrible than for her now to have to apply to Aunt Raby for fresh