“Sartain, sartain. She clim’ out the winder, ter boot.”
“Climbed out the window!”
“Yes; thar’s suthin’ wrong. But p’r’aps she’s at some of the other houses,” he added, with a faint glimmer of hope.
“She can not be, for I have been up ever since daylight, working at the window. If she had stirred from the house I surely should have noticed her. She has not left it since daylight.”
“It’s mighty strange—mighty strange! she never went off so before,” said the anxious father, gloomily.
“Hello! what’s the matter with you, Jeffries?” echoed a stentorian voice, close at hand. Jeffries turned.
It was Josh Dunbar, coming around the house. He was a sturdy, stalwart man of forty or thereabouts, good-humored and jolly, with the eye of a hawk, the arm of a blacksmith, and the leg of a savage, and like Jeffries, a widower. He had just been milking and evidently drinking the tempting fluid on the sly, too, for his bristling mustache was suspiciously creamy.
“What’s the matter with you?” he reiterated.
“Father, Katie has suddenly disappeared, very strangely and Mr. Jeffries is much alarmed.”
“Disappeared?”