And soon it was night, and yet he did not come.
Matters now looked serious, and about nine o'clock Mr.Loudon, with two of the neighbors, started out into the woods to look for Aunt Matilda's young guardian.
Kate's mother was away on a visit to her relations in another county, and so the little girl passed the night on the sofa in the parlor, with a colored woman asleep on the rug before the fireplace.

Kate would not go to bed.

She determined to stay awake until Harry should come home.
But the sofa-cushions became more and more pleasant, and very soon she was dreaming that Harry had shot a giraffe, and had skinned it, and had stuffed the skin full of sumac-leaves, and that he and she were pulling it through the woods, and that the legs caught in the trees and they could not get it along, and then she woke up.

It was bright daylight.
But Harry had not come! There was no news.

Mr.Loudon and his friends were still absent.