"Oh, how I would like to see what it is!" sighed the boy. Then he quickly measured with his eye the distance he would have to run, saw that Popsey seemed perfectly stationary, and with a sudden impulse dashed off to the corner, arriving just in time to behold a four-in-hand coach rush by like the wind.
It had scarcely passed him, however, when it stopped with an abruptness that threatened to pitch the passengers on ahead of it.
"What can be the matter?" thought Jack, and with all a boy's curiosity he ran on down the road to find out.
It seemed that one of the "leaders" had stumbled and fallen, and consequently been stepped on by the "wheelers," which resulted in such an entanglement of horses and harness as Jack had never seen before.
With wide-open eyes he looked on at the efforts of the gentlemen to straighten things out, and was about to ask if he could help them, when suddenly, with a cry of "Oh, Popsey—and the baby!" he tore back to the Hillwins' gate, and found the donkey-cart—gone.
With a terrible fear in his heart, the thoughtless boy gave one despairing look around him, and then started off on a run, in the direction in which Popsey had been headed, after a black speck just visible in the distance.
Two minutes later Helen and May came hurrying down the long walk through the garden, provoked with themselves at having staid so long.
"I do hope Amy hasn't waked up," said May; "but I told Jack in case she should— Why, where are they?"
"Perhaps Jack's driven down the road a little," suggested Helen.
But a hurried glance in both directions soon convinced the girls that the donkey-cart was nowhere near, and they were both beginning to feel a dread of they knew not what, when all at once May exclaimed, "Oh, Helen, look! here comes Jack now, and without Popsey!"