he neighbours, to
seek for the child, and tell them what had happened. I myself followed
the path that the robber had taken, and found hoof-prints upon it. I
tracked them to the creek, but there I lost the trail. The man must have
got into a boat, with his horse and the child, had perhaps crossed the
Mississippi, or perhaps gone down the stream. Who could tell where he
would land! It might be ten, twenty, fifty, or a hundred miles lower
down. I was terribly frightened, and I rode on the Hopefield. There
nothing had been seen or heard of my child; but all the men got on their
horses to help me to find him. The neighbours came also, and we sought
about for a whole day and night. No trace or track was to be found.
Nobody had seen either the child or the man who had carried him off. We
beat the woods for thirty miles round my house, crossed the Mississippi,
went up as far as Memphis, and down to Helena and the Yazoo river;
nothing was to be seen or heard. We came back as we went out,
empty-handed and discouraged. When I got home, I found the whole county
assembled at my house. Again we set out; again we searched the forest
through; every hollow tree, every bush and thicket, was looked into. Of
bears, stags, and panthers there were plenty, but no signs of my boy. On
the sixth day I came home again; but my home was become hateful to me--
every thing vexed and disgusted me. My clothes and skin were torn off by
the thorns and briers, my very bones ached; but I didn't feel it. It was
nothing to what I suffered in my mind."

On the second day after my return, I was lying heart and body sick in
bed, when one of the neighbours came in, and told me that he had just
seen, at Hopefield, a man from Muller county, who told him that a
stranger had been seen on the road to New Madrid, whose description
answered to that which Cesy had given of the child-stealer. It was a man
with a blue coat and a brown horse, and a child upon his saddle. I
forgot my sickness and my sore bones, bought a new horse--for I had
ridden mine nearly to death--and set out directly, rode day and night,
three hundred miles, to New Madrid, and when I arrived there, sure
enough I found the man who had been described to me, and a child with
him. But it was not my child! The man belonged to New Madrid, and had
been on a journey with his son into Muller county.

I don't know how I got home again. Some people found me near Hopefield,
and brought me to my house. I had fev