CHAPTER VII. MYRTLE'S LETTER—THE YOUNG MEN'S PURSUIT.
“You know all about it, Olive?” Cyprian Eveleth said to his sister, after a brief word of greeting.
“Know of what, Cyprian?”
“Why, sister, don't you know that Myrtle Hazard is missing,—gone!—gone nobody knows where, and that we are looking in all directions to find her?”
Olive turned very pale and was silent for a moment. At the end of that moment the story seemed almost old to her. It was a natural ending of the prison-life which had been round Myrtle since her earliest years. When she got large and strong enough, she broke out of jail,—that was all. The nursery-bar is always climbed sooner or later, whether it is a wooden or an iron one. Olive felt as if she had dimly foreseen just such a finishing to the tragedy of the poor girl's home bringing-up. Why could not she have done something to prevent it? Well,—what shall we do now, and as it is?—that is the question.
“Has she left no letter,—no explanation of her leaving in this way?”
“Not a word, so far as anybody in the village knows.”
“Come over to the post-office with me; perhaps we may find a letter. I think we shall.”
Olive's sagacity and knowledge of her friend's character had not misled her. She found a letter from Myrtle to herself, which she opened and read as here follows:
MY DEAREST OLIVE:—Think no evil of me for what I have done. The fire-hang-bird's nest, as Cyprian called it, is empty, and the poor bird is flown.