child's little hand over her sister's shoulder, went across the yard
to her own house to tell her husband. The others followed, and stood
about outside, listening with curiosity sanctified by intensest
sympathy. One nervous-faced boy leaped on the slant of the bulkhead
to peer in a window of the sitting-room, and when his mother pulled
him back forcibly, rubbed his grimy little knuckles across his eyes,
and a dark smooch appeared on his nose and cheeks. He was a young
boy, very small and thin for his age. He whispered to his mother and
she nodded, and he darted off in the direction of his own home.

Andrew Brewster had just come home after an all-night's search, and
he was in his bedroom in the bitter sleep of utter exhaustion and
despair. Suddenly his heart had failed him and his brain had reeled.
He had begun to feel dazed, to forget for a minute what he was
looking for. He had made incoherent replies to the men with him, and
finally one, after a whispered consultation with the others, had
said: "Look at here, Andrew, old fellow; you'd better go home and
rest a bit. We'll look all the harder while you're gone, and maybe
she'll be found when you wake up."

"Who will be found?" Andrew asked, with a dazed look. He reeled as
if he were drunk.

"Ain't had anything, has he?" one of the men whispered.

"Not a drop to my knowledge."

Andrew's lips trembled perceptibly; his forehead was knitted with
vacuous perplexity; his eyes reflected blanks of unreason; his whole
body had an effect of weak settling and subsidence. The man who