o go no farther than the bench running along
the end of the bungalow facing the house; that she had been told she
could sit there and listen to the music, but that she never would have
left the child's side for a minute if she had not supposed she would
hear her least stir--protests which the mother scarcely seemed to heed,
and which were presently lost in the deep silence which fell on all, as,
brought to a stand in the thick shrubbery surrounding the bungalow, they
saw the mother stagger up to the door, look in and turn toward them with
death in her face.

"The river!" she gasped, "the river!" and heedless of all attempt to
stop her, heedless even of the efforts made by the little one's nurse to
draw her attention to the nearness of a certain opening in the high
hedge marking off the Ocumpaugh grounds on this side, she ran down the
bank in the direction of the railway, but fainted before she had more
than cleared the thicket. When they lifted her up, they all saw the
reason for this. She had come upon a little shoe which she held with
frantic clutch against her breast--her child's shoe, which, as she
afterward acknowledged, she had loosened with her own hand on the little
one's foot.

Of course, after this the whole hillside was searched down to the fence
which separated it from the railroad track. But no further trace of the
missing child was found, nor did it appear possible to any one that she
could have strayed away in this direction. For not only was the bank
exceedingly steep and the fence at its base impassable, but a gang of
men, working as good fortune would have it, at such a point on the road
below as to render it next to impossible for her to have crossed the
track within a half-mile either way without being observed, had one and
all declared that not one of them had seen her or any other person
descend the slope.

This, however, made but little impression on the mother. She would
listen to no hints of abduction, but persisted in her declaration that
the river had swallowed her darling, and would neither rest nor turn her
head from its waters till some half a dozen men about the place had been
set systematically to work to drag the stream.

Meanwhile, the police had been notified and the whole town aroused. The
search, which had been carried on up to this time in a frantic but
desultory way, now became methodical. Nor was it confined to the
Ocumpaugh estate. All the roads and byways within half a mile