"How long ago did Roddy go?"
"Just after you went. But you mustn't be cross with him; Mamma gave him permission."
"Mamma is gone, too, to see poor Mrs. Saxby," prattled Coral.
Christine put them gently away from her.
"Well, hurry up and earn your new dollies," she counselled, smiling;
"I'll be back very soon to help you."
In the dining-room, she looked for the discarded roses and found them gathered in a dying heap on a small side-table. In the nursery, she found two of Roddy's roses in the jug. The third was missing!
Of one thing she felt as certain as she could feel of anything in the shifting quicksands of that house, and that was that Roddy had not gone to the dam, for he had promised her earnestly, the night before, that never again would he go there without her. Could he, then, have gone to the cemetery? Even that seemed unlikely, for he loved her to go with him on his excursions thither. Where else, then? The rose-leaf she had passed on the road stuck obstinately in her memory, and now she suddenly remembered that the place she had seen it was near the barn from whence she had once found Roddy emerging. Perhaps he had gone there to amuse himself in his own mysterious fashion. He might even have been there when she passed. Oh, why had she not looked in? But the omission was easily rectified. In two minutes she was out of doors again, walking rapidly the way she had come.
Roddy was not in the barn, however, and it seemed at a glance as harmless a place as she had thought it before. An end of it was full of forage, and one side piled high with old farm-implements and empty cases. Rather to the fore of the pile stood one large packing case, sacking and straw sticking from under its loose lid. Christine had just decided there was nothing here to warrant her scrutiny when, lying in front of this case, she saw something that drew her gaze like a magnet. It was another yellow rose-leaf.
"Roddy!" she cried, and was astonished at the sharp relief in her voice, for she had suddenly made up her mind that the boy was there hiding from her. There was no answer to her call. Very slowly then she went over and lifted the lid of the case. It was quite loose, and edged with a fringe of strong nails that had once fastened it to the box, but which now were red with rust. A quantity of sacking, of the kind used for winding about fragile goods, lay heaped at the top and came away easily to her hand, exposing that which lay firmly wedged at the bottom. What she had expected to find she did not know. What she did find astonished her beyond all things. It was a beautifully chiselled white marble tombstone in the shape of a cross. The whole of the inscription was clear of dust or any covering save one fading yellow rose. Awed, deeply touched, and feeling herself upon the verge of a mysterious revelation, Christine lifted Roddy's yellow rose and read the simple gold-lettered inscription: