4.  During her absence, the house was silent but happy, and, the evening being now far advanced, Lucy was expected home every minute, and Michael, Agnes, and Isabel, her father, mother, and aunt, went to meet her on the way.  They walked on and on, wondering a little, but in no degree alarmed till they reached Ladyside, and heard the cheerful din of the children within, still rioting at the close of the holiday.  Jacob Mayne came to the door, but, on their kindly asking why Lucy had not been sent home before daylight was over, he looked painfully surprised, and said that she had not been at Ladyside.

5.  Within two hours, a hundred persons were traversing the hills in all directions, even at a distance which it seemed most unlikely that poor Lucy could have reached.  The shepherds and their dogs, all the night through, searched every nook, every stony and rocky place, every piece of taller heather, every crevice that could conceal anything alive or dead:  but no Lucy was there.

6.  Her mother, who for a while seemed inspired with supernatural strength, had joined in the search, and with a quaking heart looked into every brake, or stopped and listened to every shout and halloo reverberating among the hills, intent to seize upon some tone of recognition or discovery.  But the moon sank; and then the stars, whose increased brightness had for a short time supplied her place, all faded away; and then came the gray dawn of the morning, and then the clear brightness of the day,—­and still Michael and Agnes were childless.

7.  “She has sunk into some mossy or miry place,” said Michael, to a man near him, into whose face he could not look, “a cruel, cruel death to one like her!  The earth on which my child walked has closed over her, and we shall never see her more!”

8.  At last, a man who had left the search, and gone in a direction toward the highroad, came running with something in his arms toward the place where Michael and others were standing beside Agnes, who lay, apparently exhausted almost to dying, on the sward.  He approached hesitatingly; and Michael saw that he carried Lucy’s bonnet, clothes, and plaid.

9.  It was impossible not to see some spots of blood upon the frill that the child had worn around her neck.  “Murdered! murdered!” was the one word whispered or ejaculated all around; but Agnes heard it not; for, worn out by that long night of hope and despair, she had fallen asleep, and was, perhaps, seeking her lost Lucy in her dreams.

10.  Isabel took the clothes, and, narrowly inspecting them with eye and hand, said, with a fervent voice that was heard even in Michael’s despair, “No, Lucy is yet among the living.  There are no marks of violence on the garments of the innocent; no murderer’s hand has been here.  These blood spots have been put here to deceive.  Besides, would not the murderer have carried off these things?  For what else would he have murdered her?  But, oh! foolish despair!  What speak I of?  For, wicked as the world is—­ay! desperately wicked—­there is not, on all the surface of the wide earth, a hand that would murder our child!  Is it not plain as the sun in the heaven, that Lucy has been stolen by some wretched gypsy beggar?”