Mrs. Singleton Corey never troubled herself over the impression she made upon the servant class.  She regretted the publicity that seemed to have been given her arrival and her further journey into the hills.  It annoyed her to have the girl calling her Mrs. Corey so easily; it seemed to imply an intimate acquaintance with her errand which was disquieting in the extreme.  Was it possible that the Humphrey woman had been talking to outsiders?  Or had the police really gotten upon the trail of Jack?

She hurried into her warmest things, drank the coffee because it would stimulate her for the terrible journey ahead of her, and went down to find the four-horse team waiting outside, tails whipping between shivering hind legs, hips drawn down as for a lunge forward, heads tossing impatiently.  The red-faced driver was bundled to his eyes and did not say a word while he tucked the robes snugly down around her feet.

The snow was driving up the street in a steady wind, but Mrs. Singleton Corey faced it undauntedly.  She saw the white-veiled plaza upon one side, the row of little stores huddled behind bare trees upon the other side.  It seemed a neat little town, a curiously placid little town to be so buffeted by the storm.  Behind it the mountain loomed, a dark blur in the gray-white world.  Beautiful, yes; but Mrs. Singleton Corey was not looking for beauty that day.  She was a mother, and she was looking for her boy.

Two men, with two long-handled shovels, ran out from a little store halfway down the street and, still running, threw themselves into the back of the sleigh.

“Better go back and get another shovel,” the driver advised them, pulling up.  “I forgot mine.  Anything they want me to haul up?  Where’s them blankets?  And say, Hank, you better go into the drugstore and get a bottle of the best liquor they’ve got.  Brandy.”

“I’ve got a bottle of rye,” the man standing behind Mrs. Singleton Corey volunteered.  “Stop at the Forest Service, will you?  They’ve got the blankets there.  We can get another shovel from them.”

The driver spoke to his leaders, and they went on, trotting briskly into the wind.  Blurred outlines of cottages showed upon either hand.  Before one of these they stopped, and a young man came out with a roll of canvas-covered bedding balanced upon his bent shoulders.  Hank climbed down, went in and got a shovel.

“Ain’t heard anything more?” questioned the driver, in the tone one involuntarily gives to tragedy.

The young man dumped his burden into the back of the sleigh and shook his head.  “Our men are going to stay up there till they find her,” he said.  “There’s a sack of grub I wish you’d take along.”

He glanced at Mrs. Singleton Corey, whose dark eyes were staring at him through her veil, and ran back into the house.  Running so, with his back turned, his body had a swing like Jack’s, and her throat ached with a sudden impulse toward weeping.