“And he is not back yet?” she said to the trapper in a hopeless tone.

“No, marm, not yet,” he answered gloomily.  “It’ll be night ’fore long; thar ain’t much daylight left him to travel in.”

Alice caught her breath.  “But you think he’ll come, don’t you, Mr. Holt?” “Yes, marm, I do,” he answered, laying down his axe. “’T ain’t hardly possible he won’t; I cal’late they’ll both git in ’fore dark.  It won’t do to borry trouble ’fore it comes.  It was my fault, marm—­I shouldn’t hev let him go—­it warn’t right—­but he would hev his way.”

“And you don’t think they’re lost?” she ventured timidly.

“Not so long as he stays by my son, marm—­no, ’t ain’t likely they’re lost; it warn’t that I was thinkin’ of.”  He saw the sudden terror in her eyes.

“But you think he will be back, don’t you?  Oh! you do, Mr. Holt—­don’t you?”

“Yes, marm, I tell ye I do.  He had grit ’nough to go, and I cal’late he’ll hev grit ’nough to git back.  He seemed to know what he was doin’.”

She turned away that he might not see her tears.  She could hear the dull whack of the old man’s axe as she retraced her steps to her place by the crackling fire.

For another anxious hour she sat shivering before it, then the Clown announced apologetically that supper was ready.  Blakeman handed her a cup of tea, but she did not taste it.  Annette put to rights the few comforts within the lean-to and re-folded the blankets.  Margaret and Holcomb whispered together.  All moved as if in the shadow of a great calamity.

It was now pitch dark and raining.  The camp sat in strained silence.  Finally Margaret came over to her mother and whispered something in her ear.  A weary smile crossed Alice’s lips; then she beckoned to Holcomb, laid her hand on his arm, and looking up into his face said in a broken voice: 

“You will look after Margaret, Mr. Holcomb, won’t you, if—­if anything has happened?”

“All my life, Mrs. Thayor.”

Before she could speak the girl leaned over and hid her face on her mother’s shoulder.  A light broke over the mother’s face; then she found her voice.

“And it is true, Margaret?” she said, smoothing the girl’s cheek.  “What will your father say?”

“He knows I love Billy,” she whispered, as she threw her arms around her mother’s neck and burst into tears.

A grave and ominous anxiety now took possession of the camp.  That something must be done, and at once, to find Thayor, had become evident as the night began to settle.  But no man in the camp lagged.  Billy and the trapper were busy tearing long strips of yellow bark from a birch tree for torches, while the Clown, who had been hurriedly cutting two forked sticks, stood fitting them with the twisted bark.  For some moments the three woodsmen held a low and earnest conversation together, Alice watching them with startled eyes.  She caught also the figure of the trapper and the old dog standing at the limit of the firelight waiting for Holcomb, and the flare of the two bark torches that the old man held in his hands.