th the
particular localities. When the division of labor was completed, the men
had arranged to start out in such directions as would enable them to
range and view the whole countryside for the extreme distance of radius
to which it was supposed the boy could possibly have travelled. The
assignment of Halford and Dirck to the river course was prompt, for it
was known that they habitually hunted and fished along that line. The
father of the boy, who stood by, was reminded of this fact, for a
curious and doubtful look came into his face when he heard two of the
most active and energetic men in the town set aside to search a region
where he had no idea that his boy could have strayed. Some excuse was
given also for the detailing of two other men of equal ability to take
the range immediately above the river bank, and within hailing distance
of those in the marshes by the shore. Had his mind not been in the daze
of mortal grief and perplexity, he would have grasped the sinister
significance of this precaution; but he accepted it in dull and hopeless
confidence. When after they had set forth he told his wife of the
arrangements made, and she heard the names of the four men who had been
appointed to work near the riverside, she pulled the faded old Paisley
shawl (that the child's nurse had wrapped about her) across her swollen
eyes, and moaned, "The river, the river--oh, my boy, my boy!"

[Illustration]

Perhaps the men heard her, for being all in place to take their several
directions, they made a certain broken start and were off into the
darkness at the base of the hill, before the two or three of their sex
who were left in charge of the women had fairly given the word. The
tramp of men's feet and horses' hoofs died down into the shadowy
distance. The women went inside the spacious old corn-crib that had been
turned into a gun-club shooting-box, and there the mother laid her face
on the breast of her best friend, and clung to her without a sound, only
shuddering once and again, and holding her with a convulsive grip. The
other women moved around, and busied themselves with little offices,
like the making of tea and the trimming of lamps, and talked among each
other in a quiet way with the odd little upward inflections with which
women simulate cheerfulness and hope, telling tales of children who had
been lost and had been found again all safe and unscathed, and praising
the sagacity and persistence of certain of the men e