"It's not there now," said Maggie, standing on tip-toe that she might see over the shelf.
"It must be, child; no one has been here to touch it," said Fanny, leaving her cream cheese and coming to see for herself. "Why, where can it be? I certainly put it just here, opposite the window, but not so near that it need have fallen out. But we'll go round and look."
And out all three went, going round to the back of the dairy, and hunting among the stones and bushes there.
"No, it is not here," said Fannie; "and I didn't see how it could have fallen out without hands to help it. Oh!" as her quick eye, trained to notice the smallest sign, or change which took place in this mountain country, saw where the moss upon the grey rocks had been torn off as though some one had slid over it. "Oh, some one has been here. Oh, Flossy did not bark for nothing. Some one has been here behind the rocks, and when my back was turned, has climbed over, and snatched the cup. What shall I do?"
And Fanny turned first red, then white, fearing that she might be blamed for the loss of the cup; then scrambled upon the rocks to see if she could find any trace of the thief. Two figures were in sight; the one that of a man with a pack on his back, who was trudging along the road between the mountain and the lake, going as if he were in a hurry too; the other that of a boy who was climbing up the steep and rugged path which led to the "Chief's Head."
Fanny took little notice of the former, though he was the nearer of the two; but shading her eyes with her hand, gazed up the mountain side after the boy.
"It's Lem Owen," she exclaimed in an excited tone. "I might have known it. He has taken it. There's nobody else hereabouts who would do such a thing."
Distressed at the loss of her beloved cup, startled at the thought that Lem had been so near them, and still more frightened by Fanny's excitement, Bessie burst into a loud passionate cry.
"Oh! make him give it back," she said. "It's mine; it's my very own cup that Aunt Bessie gave me. I will have it; the bad, bad boy. Oh! make him give it back, Fanny."
Maggie threw her arms about her, and she, too, burst into tears.