"No--nor never will alive--that's my opinion."

Howard asked for the nearest livery-stable and within twenty minutes was on
his way to Dent's farm. His driver knew all about the lost child. Two
hundred men were still searching. "And Mrs. Dent, she's been sittin' by the
window, list'nin' day and night. She won't speak nor eat and she ain't shed
a tear. It was her only child. The men come in sayin' it ain't no use to
hunt any more, an' they look at her an' out they goes ag'in."

Soon the driver pointed to a cottage near the road. The gate was open; the
grass and the flower-beds were trampled into a morass. The door was thrown
wide and several women were standing about the threshold. At the window
within view of the road and the mountains sat the mother--a young woman
with large brown eyes, and clear-cut features, refined, beautified, exalted
by suffering. Her look was that of one listening for a faint, far away
sound upon which hangs the turn of the balances to joy or to despair.

* * * * *

That morning two of the searchers went to the northeast into the dense and
tangled swamp woods between Bald Peak and Cloudy Peak--the wildest
wilderness in the mountains. The light barely penetrates the foliage on the
brightest days. The ground is rough, sometimes precipitous, closely covered
with bushes and tangled creepers.

The two explorers, almost lost themselves, came at last to the edge of a
swamp surrounded by cedars. They half-crawled, half-climbed through the low
trees and festooning creepers to the edge of a clear bit of open, firm
ground.