Here she paused, the animation left her face and she looked pityfully old and weary.  Betty reached over and patted her hand, and finally she resumed her story.

“Abner kept his word and brought the sheriff around that same afternoon, but they couldn’t find Willie—­he was gone.  He’d left a note for me—­full o’ love—­but sayin’ that he couldn’t bear to bring disgrace on me an’ so he’d gone away.  When he’d done what his pa wanted him to, he said, he’d come back an’ then we could live in the big house an’ be happy.

“An’ from that day to this, I’ve never heard a word from my little boy.”

“Oh,” cried Betty, pityingly, “what a terrible thing!  I should think he could have written.  But maybe he did, and his letters never reached you.”

“That old Abner must have been a beast,” cried Mollie, clenching her hands belligerently.  “And those boys!  Wouldn’t I like to put them behind the bars?”

“You see,” the old lady went on tonelessly, “it was only a little while after Willie ran away that they found out that tramps started the fire.  Of course Abner was sorry then, but it was too late.  My boy was gone.”

“But you’ll find him yet,” cried Betty hopefully, springing to her feet.  “I’m quite sure you will.”

But the old lady shook her head sadly.

“I don’t think so, my dear,” she said slowly.  “If my Willie boy had been alive I’m sure he would have come to me.  He’s—­he’s—­almost certain—­to be—­dead.”

The girls tried to comfort the little old woman for a few minutes more, then had to hurry away to various duties about the Hostess House—­Mollie to help a young Polish boy who had been drafted into the army and who was struggling valiantly and conscientiously to learn English, Grace to write a letter for a Southern mountain boy who had never learned to read and write, and Amy and Betty to help a timid and somewhat helpless mother through the long hours of waiting before she could have a brief visit with her son during his time of relief from duty.

CHAPTER V

FUN AND SOLDIERS

“I wish we could do something for Mrs. Sanderson,” Betty remarked with a sigh.  “I haven’t slept a wink for two nights just trying to think out some way of finding that boy of hers.”

“He must have been a darling,” Grace added thoughtfully.  “I can’t understand how a boy like that could run away from home and stay away for years without even trying to get in touch with his mother.”

“Maybe that charge changed his character,” Mollie suggested dramatically.  “I’ve heard of such things.”

“I’ve read of ’em,” sniffed Grace.  “But I must say I never believed it.  Give a boy the right sort of character to start with—­”

“I don’t see where you get that,” Mollie interrupted hotly.  “Why, half the criminals in the world are made up of boys who were good enough to start with, but because of some temptation, or their environment, went wrong—­”