He had some hope that, if Sissy were skulking round, she would find it easier to go back to the house when he was absent, and that he should find her as usual on his return; but, as he wrought at his oar in returning across the leaden water, looking up occasionally to make the log house his aim, and staring for the most part at the lone hills, under the pine woods of which his late companions had disappeared, his heart gradually grew more heavy; all the more because the cheerfulness of their society had buoyed up his spirit in their presence, did it now suffer depression.  The awful presentiment began to haunt him that he would not find the girl that night, that he had in grim reality “lost her.”  If this were the case, what a fool, what a madman, he had been to let go the only aid within his reach!  He stopped his rowing for a minute, and almost thought of turning to call the surveying party back again.  But no, Sissy might be—­in all probability was—­already in the house; in that case what folly to have brought them back, delaying their work and incurring their anger!  So he reasoned, and went on towards home; but, in truth, it was not their delay or displeasure that deterred him so much as his own pride, which loathed the thought of laying bare his cause for fear and distress.

CHAPTER VI.

The day was duller now.  The sun, in passing into the western sky, had entered under thicker veils of white.  The film of ice on the bay, which had melted in the pale sunbeams of noon, would soon form again.  The air was growing bitterly cold.

When Bates had moored his boat, he went up the hill heavily.  The dog, which had been shut in the house to guard it, leaped out when he opened the door.  Sissy was not there.

Bates went in and found one of her frocks, and, bringing it out, tried to put the animal on the scent of her track.  He stooped, and held the garment under the dog’s nose.  The dog sniffed it, laid his nose contentedly on Bates’s arm, looked up in his face, and wagged his tail with most annoying cheerfulness.

“Where is she?” jerked Bates.  “Where is she?  Seek her, good dog.”

The dog, all alert, bounded off a little way and returned again with an inconsequent lightness in tail and eye.  One of his ears had been torn in a battle with the strange dogs, but he was more elated by the conflict than depressed by the wound.  When he came back, he seemed to Bates almost to smile as if he said:  “It pleases me that you should pay me so much attention, but as for the girl, I know her to be satisfactorily disposed of.”  Bates did not swear at the animal; he was a Scotchman, and he would have considered it a sin to swear:  he did not strike the dog either, which he would not have considered a sin at all.  He was actually afraid to offend the only living creature who could befriend and help him in his search.  Very patiently he bent the dog’s nose to the frock and to the ground, begging and commanding him to seek.  At length the dog trotted off by a circuitous route up the clearing, and Bates followed.  He hoped the dog was really seeking, but feared he was merely following some fancy that by thus running he would be rid of his master’s solicitude.