either way
were covered by a most careful investigation. All the near-by houses
were entered, especially those which the child was most in the habit of
frequenting, but no one had seen her, nor could any trace of her
presence be found. At five o'clock all hope of her return was abandoned
and, much against Mrs. Ocumpaugh's wish, who declared that the news of
the child's death would affect her father far less than the dreadful
possibilities of an abduction, the exact facts of the case had been
cabled to Mr. Ocumpaugh.

The night and another day passed, bringing but little relief to the
situation. Not an eye had as yet been closed in Homewood, nor had the
search, ceased for an instant. Not an inch of the great estate had been
overlooked, yet men could still be seen beating the bushes and peering
into all the secluded spots which once had formed the charm of this
delightful place. As on the land, so on the river. All the waters in the
dock had been dragged, yet the work went on, some said under the very
eye of Mrs. Ocumpaugh. But there was no result as yet.

In the city the interest was intense. The telegraph at police
headquarters had been clicking incessantly for thirty-six hours under
the direction, some said, of the superintendent himself. Everything
which could be done had been done, but as yet the papers were able to
report nothing beyond some vague stories of a child, with its face very
much bound up, having been seen at the heels of a woman in the Grand
Central Station in New York, and hints of a covered wagon, with a crying
child inside, which had been driven through Westchester County at a
great pace shortly before sunset on the previous day, closely followed
by a buggy with the storm-apron up, though the sun shone and there was
not a cloud in the sky; but nothing definite, nothing which could give
hope to the distracted mother or do more than divide the attention of
the police between two different but equally tenable theories. Then came
the cablegram from Mr. Ocumpaugh, which threw amateur as well as
professional detectives into the field. Among the latter was myself;
which naturally brings me back once more to my own conclusions.

Of one thing I felt sure. Very early in my cogitations, before we had
quitted the Park Avenue tunnel in fact, I had decided in my own mind
that if I were to succeed in locating the lost heiress, it must be by
subtler methods than lay open to the police. I was master of such
methods