husband, watched the proceedings of his bird and
himself as attentively as if she had never seen anything of the sort
before in her life. On my way to the plantation I kept carefully
beyond the range of view from the luncheon-room window. Nobody saw me
and nobody followed me. It was then a quarter to three o'clock by my
watch.

Once among the trees I walked rapidly, until I had advanced more than
half-way through the plantation. At that point I slackened my pace and
proceeded cautiously, but I saw no one, and heard no voices. By little
and little I came within view of the back of the boat-house--stopped
and listened--then went on, till I was close behind it, and must have
heard any persons who were talking inside. Still the silence was
unbroken--still far and near no sign of a living creature appeared
anywhere.

After skirting round by the back of the building, first on one side and
then on the other, and making no discoveries, I ventured in front of
it, and fairly looked in. The place was empty.

I called, "Laura!"--at first softly, then louder and louder. No one
answered and no one appeared. For all that I could see and hear, the
only human creature in the neighbourhood of the lake and the plantation
was myself.

My heart began to beat violently, but I kept my resolution, and
searched, first the boat-house and then the ground in front of it, for
any signs which might show me whether Laura had really reached the
place or not. No mark of her presence appeared inside the building,
but I found traces of her outside it, in footsteps on the sand.

I detected the footsteps of two persons--large footsteps like a man's,
and small footsteps, which, by putting my own feet into them and
testing their size in that manner, I felt certain were Laura's. The
ground was confusedly marked in this way just before the boat-house.
Close against one side of it, under shelter of the projecting roof, I
discovered a little hole in the sand--a hole artificially made, beyond
a doubt. I just noticed it, and then turned away immediately to trace
the footsteps as far as I could, and to follow the direction in which
they might lead me.

They led me, starting from the left-hand side of the boat-house, along
the edge of the trees, a distance, I should think, of between two and
three hundred yards, and then the sandy ground showed no further trace
of them. Feeling that the persons whose course I was tracking must
necessarily have