moment in the railroad camp and pressed into service. On the front
seat Mary Bell was wedged in between the driver and Grandpa Barry, a
thin, sinewy old man, stupid from sleep. Mary Bell never forgot the
silent drive. The evening was turning chilly, low clouds scudded
across the sky, little gusts of wind, heavy with rain, blew about
them. The fall of the horse's feet on the road and the rattle of
harness and wheels were the only sounds to break the brooding
stillness that preceded the storm. After a while the road ran level
with the marshes, and they got the rank salt breeze full in their
faces; and in the last light they could see the glitter of dark
water creeping under the rushes. The first flying drops of rain
fell.

"And right over the ridge," said Mary Bell to herself, "they are
dancing!"

A fire had been built at the edge of the marsh, and three figures
ran out from it as they came up: two boys and a heavy middle-aged
man. It was for Mary Bell to tell Henderson that it would be hours
before he could look for other help than this oddly assorted
wagonful. The man's disappointment was pitiful.

"My God--my God!" he said heavily, as the situation dawned on him,
"an' I counted on fifty! Well, 'tain't your fault, Mary Bell!"

They all climbed out, and faced the trackless darkening stretch of
pools and hummocks, the treacherous, uncertain ground beneath a
tangle of coarse grass. Even with fifty men it would have been an
ugly search.