ll sat there on the ground. The doctor
touched him on the shoulder. He lifted a face so wan, so altered, that
the doctor started.

"My poor old fellow," he said, "you ought not to have sat here all
night. We will go home now. There is nothing more to be done."

"Oh, yer ain't a goin' to give up, doctor, be yer?" cried Caesar. "Oh,
don't never give up. She must be here somewheres. Bodies floats allers
in fresh water: she'll come to shore before long. Oh, don't give up!
I'll set here an' watch, an' you go home an' git somethin' to eat. You
looks dreadful."

"No, no, Caesar," the doctor replied, with the first tears he had felt
yet welling up in his eyes, "you must come home with me. There is no
hope of finding her."

Caesar did not move, but fixed a sullen gaze on the water. The doctor
spoke again, more firmly:

"You must come, Caesar. Your mistress would tell you so herself." At this
Caesar rose, docile, and the two went home in silence through the hemlock
woods.

For three days the search for Hetty continued. It was suggested that
possibly she might have gone over to the Springton shore for some
purpose, and there have met with some accident or assault. This
suggestion opened up new vistas of conjecture, almost more terrible than
the certainty of her death would have been. Parties of three and four
scoured the woods in all directions. Again and again Dr. Eben passed
over the spot where she had lain crouched so long: the bushes which had
been brushed back as she passed, bent back again to let him go over her
very footsteps; but nothing could speak to betray her secret. Nature
seems most mute when we most need her help: she keeps, through all
our distresses, a sort of dumb and faithful neutrality, which is not,
perhaps, so devoid of sympathy as it appears.

After the third day was over, it was accepted by tacit consent that
farther search would be useless. Hetty was mourned as dead: in every
home her name was tenderly and sorrowingly spoken; old memories of her
gay and mirthful youth, of her cheery and busy womanhood, were revived
and dwelt upon. But in her own home was silence that could be felt. The
grief there was grief that could not speak. Only little Raby, of all the
household, found words to use; and his childish and inconsolable laments
made the speechless anguish around him all the greater. To Dr. Eben, the
very sight of the child was a bitter and unreasonable pain. Except for
Raby, he thought, Hetty wou