e window, and you shall see Erema make up to her grandmamma."

CHAPTER XXXIX

NOT AT HOME

Mrs. Hockin, however, had not the pleasure promised her by the facetious
Major of seeing me "make up to my grandmamma." For although we set off
at once to catch the strange woman who had roused so much curiosity,
and though, as we passed the door of Bruntlands, we saw her still at her
post in the valley, like Major Hockin's new letter-box, for some reason
best known to herself we could not see any more of her. For, hurry as he
might upon other occasions, nothing would make the Major cut a corner of
his winding "drive" when descending it with a visitor. He enjoyed every
yard of its length, because it was his own at every step, and he counted
his paces in an under-tone, to be sure of the length, for perhaps the
thousandth time. It was long enough in a straight line, one would have
thought, but he was not the one who thought so; and therefore he had
doubled it by judicious windings, as if for the purpose of breaking the
descent.

"Three hundred and twenty-one," he said, as he came to a post, where he
meant to have a lodge as soon as his wife would let him; "now the old
woman stands fifty-five yards on, at a spot where I mean to have an
ornamental bridge, because our fine saline element runs up there when
the new moon is perigee. My dear, I am a little out of breath, which
affects my sight for the moment. Doubtless that is why I do not see
her."

"If I may offer an opinion," I said, "in my ignorance of all the changes
you have made, the reason why we do not see her may be that she is gone
out of sight."

"Impossible!" Major Hockin cried--"simply impossible, Erema! She never
moves for an hour and a half. And she was not come, was she, when you
came by?"

"I will not be certain," I answered; "but I think that I must have seen
her if she had been there, because I was looking about particularly at
all your works as we came by."

"Then she must be there still; let us tackle her."

This was easier said than done, for we found no sign of any body at the
place where she certainly had been standing less than five minutes ago.
We stood at the very end and last corner of the ancient river trough,
where a little seam went inland from it, as if some trifle of a brook
had stolen down while it found a good river to welcome it. But now there
was only a little oozy gloss from the gleam of the sun upon some lees of
marshy brine left a