understandingly, and they went on in silence till they met Jenks.

Jenks was an oldish man with bushy grey whiskers, who never wore a
coat, and now he was wet to the loins with mud and water.

"That there ol' pond," he explained. "I've been an' took a look at
her. Tromped through her proper, I did, an' I'll go bail there ain't
so much as a dead cat in all the mud of her. Thish yer's a mistry,
mum, an' no mistake."

Mother stared at him. "I can't bear this," she said suddenly. "You
must go on searching, Jenks, and Walter must go on his bicycle to the
police station at once. Call him, please!"

"Walter!" roared Jenks obediently.

"Comin'!" answered the boot-boy, and burst forth from the bushes. In
swift, clear words, which no stupidity could mistake or forget,
Mother gave him his orders, spoken in a tone that meant urgency.
Walter went flying to execute them.

"Oh, Mother, where do you think Joan can be?" begged Joyce when Jenks
had gone off to resume his search:

"I don't know," said Mother. "It's all so absurd."

"If there was wood-ladies, they wouldn't hurt a baby like Joan,"
suggested Joyce.

"Oh, who could hurt her!" cried Mother, and fell to calling again.
Her voice, of which each accent was music, alternated with the harsh
roars of Jenks.

Walter on his bicycle must have hurried, in spite of his permanently
punctured front tire, for it was a very short time before bells rang
in the steep lane from the road and Superintendent Farrow himself
wheeled his machine in at the gate, massive and self-possessed, a
blue-clad minister of comfort. He heard Mother's tale, which embodied
that of Joyce, with a half-smile lurking in his moustache and his big
chin creased back against his collar. Then he nodded, exactly as if
he saw through the whole business and could find Joan in a minute or
two, and propped his bicycle against the fence.

"I understand, then," he said, "that the little girl's been missing
for rather more than an hour. In that case, she can't have got far. I
sent a couple o' constables round the roads be'ind the wood before I
started, an' now I'll just 'ave a look through the wood myself."

"Thank you," said Mother. "I don't know why I'm so nervous, but--."

"Very natural, ma'am," said the big superintendent, comfortingly, and
went with them to the wood.

It was rather thrilling to go with him and watch him. Joyce and
Mother had to show him the place from which Joan had started and the
spot at w