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Show tha number of "crank" letters received re-ceived by the committee is large. On ' of these, postmarked Worcester, Mass., declared that the boy was stolen by gypsies and that the writer saw him In a gypsy camp hidden by blankets. The Worcester police made a thorough Investigation. In-vestigation. The result was a refutation refuta-tion of the charge. The mother In her distraction has turned to clairvoyant and fortune tellers and spends her precious pre-cious time and money acting upoa their "revelations," only to encounter renewed disappointments. The case of Charlie Ross In Philadelphia Phila-delphia some twenty-five years ago, mysterious as it was in many respects was not so baffling as this mystery ol Lowell. In the former lamentable case it was plain that the child had beei kidnapped for ransom. There is n such probability in connection witl the disappearance of Artie Dent Ii fact, neither the family nor the friendf of the missing boy can offer any rea scnable explanation of the mystery Mrs. Dent has about given up hope ol ever again seeing her child, but thi ' father and sisters have not given waj' to their fears and express confidence that little Artie will ere long be restored re-stored to his home. , LEFT BEOKEN HEARTS MYSTERY OF A LITTLE BOY'S DISAPPEARANCE. Fnnr-Year-Old. Child Last Seen Walkln; on tlie Canal Hank Citizens Committee Commit-tee Aiding Dl.tracted Parent In the Starch. Ca the morning of March 28 George Arthur Dent, the sturdy little 4-year-old sen of Arthur G. Dent of L-well, Mass., went down to play on the canal ! bank with two of his small companionsAubrey compan-ionsAubrey Hunt and Jimmie Me-Dermott. Me-Dermott. They had no right to be there. The canal is fenced off, but a hole had been scooped out near the corner of a mill and through this the little fellows crawled to get near the water. The two companions of "Ar- j tie" went home to dinner before noori, but the Dent boy failed to do likewise. He has not been seen since, and Lowell Lo-well has for three months been.m a maze of excitement mixed with sympathy sym-pathy for the maddened parents of the little bey. The entire city has searched for him, hundreds of thousands in New England and elsewhere have joined in the quest, but not a scrap of trustworthy trustwor-thy evidence pointing to the child's I fate has been laid bare. Arthur G. i Dent, father of the missing boy, keeps a "corporation" boarding- house at the extremity of a long row of "corpora- tlon" Houses that lie between the great cotton mills of the Tremont and Suf-folk Suf-folk and Lawrence companies. "Artie" is or perhaps was the youngest child of the family, as pretty a boy as could be met with in a day's march. Strong, swift, active and skillful in whatever his baby hands, feet or brain found to do he was the idol of parents and sisters and a favorite in all the neighborhood. When the first hue and GEORGE ARTHUR DENT, cry was raised and it was learned that he had been seen on the grassy slope of the canal bank it was assumed that he had been drowned. Suspicion seemed to become a certainty when one of the little boys of the neighborhood neighbor-hood told his mother that Jimmie Mc-Dermott Mc-Dermott had said to him: "I know where ..rtie Dent is. I pushed him into the water."'. But searching cross-examination of Jimmie led to the conclusion conclu-sion that he had merely been making a bid for fame. He himself declared ' with tearful sincerity that he had been "only fooling." So that theory failed. ' Already without a leg to stand on, the drowning theory was . forgotten when two overseers of the Tremont and Suffolk mills came forward with the statement that at noon, an hour after Artie had been seen on the canal bjnk, they had seen Mm v,a king alcnj Cabot street toward his home. Within the knowledge of those who are searching for Artie Dent he has not since been seen, alive or dead. The further search progressed the deeper was the mystery. First the parents par-ents and friends, then the police, then the entire community threw themselves them-selves into the task of trying to trace the missing child. Then the whole country became interested in the fate of "the Charlie Ross of Lowell," and sharp eyes everywhere watched for a child answering the description sent out by the citizens' committee organized organ-ized to aid the heartbroken parents. The citizens' committee is an index of public feeling in Lowell. Its chairman chair-man is Colonel A. M. Chadwick, paymaster pay-master of the Tremont and Suffolk mill corporation, 'who was a memiier of the staff of Governor Brackett of Massachusetts. The committee is raising rais-ing a fund for detective work and the offer of rewards. They have already collected $1,500. Meanwhile Artie Dent'B father has offered $500 the fruit of a lifetime's saving for the recovery re-covery of his child alive and $100 for proof that he is dead. Artie's love of horses and his ability abil-ity to drive have given rise to the theory the-ory that some circus performer has stolen him and is training him to become be-come a circus performer. A woman who lives in Lyme, N. H., has written to Mrs. Dent telling of having seen a lad of Artie's age and general appearance appear-ance perform in a circus which played fh Lyme some weeks ago. She thought she recognized the boy from his description de-scription and portrait. Ai was the case with Charlie Ross, |