ouse, where every room held some reminder of her loss. Certainly
she remained at the Club, and perhaps she got some unreasoning comfort
out of the rumors and reports that came to that spot from every side. It
was but the idle talk that springs up and flies about on such occasions,
but now and then it served as a straw for her drowning hope to clutch
at. Word would come of a farmer who had seen a strange child in his
neighbor's wagon. Then would come a story of an inn-keeper who had
driven into town to ask if anybody had lost a boy. Then somebody would
bring a report at third or fourth hand of a child rescued alive from the
river. Of course story after story, report after report, came to
nothing. The child seen in the wagon was a girl of fourteen. The
inn-keeper had come to town to ask about the lost child, but it was only
because he had heard the report and was curious. A child indeed had been
rescued from the river, but the story was a week old. And so it went,
and the hot sun rose to the zenith and declined, and the coppery haze
grew dim, and the shadows lengthened, and the late afternoon was come
with its awful threat of impending night.

[Illustration]

Dirck and Halford, down in the riverside marsh, saw that dreaded change
fall upon the landscape, and they paused in their search and looked at
one another silently. They had been ceaselessly at work all day, and the
work had left its marks on them. Their faces were burnt to a fiery red,
they were torn and scratched in the brambles, their clothes were soaked
in mud and water to the waist, and they had been bitten and stung by
insects until they looked as though some strange fever had broken out on
them.

They had just met after a long beat, each having described the half of a
circle around a piece of open water, and had sunk down in utter
weariness on a little patch of dry ground, and for a minute looked at
each other in silence. Then the younger man spoke.

"Hal," he said, "he never came this far."

By way of answer the other drew from his pocket a child's shoe, worn and
wet, and held it up.

"Where did you find it?" asked Dirck.

"Right over there," said Halford, "near that old wagon-trail."

Dirck looked at him with a question in his eyes, which found its answer
in the grave inclination of the elder's head. Then Dirck shook his own
head and whistled--one long, low, significant whistle.

"Well," he said, "I thought so. Any trail?"

"Not the least," repli