"Glum, I should say. Where's Lady Jess?"

Wolfgang elevated his eyebrows, shrugged his shoulders and made a
gesture of ignorance, but said no word.

"Lost your tongues, mostly, hey? I say--where's the captain?"

Elsa lumbered forward to the doorway, and dully regarded the visitor;
then, after a time, replied:

"Not here."

Her brevity was another contrast to her former volubility, but it was
sufficient to thrill the questioner's heart with fresh dismay.

"Has she been here to-day?"

Elsa shook her head. Otto came out from the shed and glanced
disconsolately at Samson, then slowly returned whence he had come.

The herder's temper flamed, and, snapping his whip at the air, he
cried out, hotly:

"Look at me, you passel of idiots! You think you know what trouble is
just because you've lost a handful of money? Well, you don't! You
haven't even guessed at it. Money! The world's full of that, but there
never was more than one Lady Jess, and I tell you--I tell you--she's
lost!"

He had spoken out at last the fear he had scarcely acknowledged, and
the shock of his own plain speech held him silent thereafter. His head
drooped, his great body settled in the saddle, as if the whole burden
of his sixty years had fallen upon him in that moment. His attitude,
even more than his words, conveyed his meaning to his hearers, and, in
a flash, the real values of what they had loved, and now lost, fell
into their rightful places.

"Money? The little lady?" Ah! what, after all, was the one compared to
the other?

"Man--you lie!" retorted Wolfgang, clinching his fist and advancing
with a threatening air. Elsa stepped to his side, her wide face
turning even paler than it had been, and a startled look dawning in
her eyes. Even Otto, the six-foot "child," reappeared from his retreat
and regarded the horseman reproachfully.

As for him, he roused from his momentary despondency and glared upon
the trio of spectators as if they, and they alone, were to blame for
the calamity which had befallen.

Question and answer followed swiftly, and again Samson was off down
the slope, headed now for distant Marion, the least likely of all
places wherein his darling might be found. Once he was out of sight,
the Winkler household resolved itself into an additional search party;
and it was noticeable that, whereas formerly, when they were leaving
the home, they would carefully secure the cabin against intruders,
they now disdained any further