er the same. Here was John
Cather gone; and here, presently, was my uncle, pacing the floor
below. Up and down, up and down: I thought the pat of his wooden leg
would go on forever--would forever, by night and day, express the
restlessness of thirst. And here was Judy, abroad, in trouble I could
not now divine--'twas a thing most strange and disturbing that she
should stand in distress before me. I had accounted for it, but could
not now explain--not with John Cather gone. I was mystified, not
agitated by alarms. I would meet the maid on the Whisper Cove road in
the morning, thinks I, and resolve the puzzle. I would discover more
than that. I would discover whether or not I had blundered. But this
new hope, springing confidently though it did, could not thrive in the
wretchedness of John Cather's departure. I was not happy.

My uncle roughly awoke me at dawn.

"Sir?" I asked.

"Judy," says he, "haves disappeared."

He held me until he perceived that I had commanded myself....

XXV

TO SEA

Judith had vanished! Our maid-servant, astir in the child's behalf
before dawn, in her anxious way, was returned breathless from Whisper
Cove with the report. There was no Judith with the wife of Moses
Shoos: nor had there been that night. 'Twas still but gray abroad--a
drear dawn: promising a belated, sullen day. We awoke the harbor to
search the hills, the ledges of the cliffs, the surf-washed shore.
'Twas my uncle hither, the maid-servant thither, myself beyond.
Clamorous knocking, sudden lights in the cottages, lights pale in the
murky daylight, and a subdued gathering of our kind men-folk: I
remember it all--the winged haste, the fright of them that were
aroused, the shadows and the stumbling of the farther roads, the
sickly, sleepy lights in the windows, the troubled dawn. We dispersed:
day broadened, broke gray and glum upon Twin Islands--but discovered
no lost maid to us.

'Twas whispered about, soon, that the women had spoken evil of Judith
in our harbor; and pursuing this ill-omened rumor, in a rage I could
not command, I came at last upon the shameful truth: the women had
spoken scandal of the maid, the which she had learned from Aunt Esther
All, the Whisper Cove gossip. The misfortune of gentle Parson Stump,
poor man! who had in the ear of Eli Flack's wife uttered a sweetly
jocular word concerning Judith and the honorable intention of John
Cather, who walked with her alone on the roads, about his love-ma