“You were right, Tommy,” he said, as he stopped in the doorway.  “I was a fool.  Understand,” he added, quickly, “that if I thought I could be of one particle more value than the men I shall send in my place the work here could go to eternal perdition!  But I can tell them all that I know of the way she has gone—­and she would want me to stay here and push the work as if nothing had happened.”

Mrs. Ridley, hysterically crying that Argyl was dead, that she knew that she was dead, and that she herself was to blame, came sobbing and moaning and wringing her hands into the office.

“Don’t do that!” Conniston cried, angrily.  “If you want to do any good, go down to the lunch-counter and help your husband put up fifty lunches.  The men may be gone all day.  Put up plenty.”

She hurried away, drying her eyes now that there was something for her to do; and the two men, never looking at each other, sat and waited the coming of Brayley’s men.

All that long, endlessly, wretchedly long forenoon, Conniston went about his work like a man under sentence of death, his face white and drawn, his step heavy, his voice silent save when necessity drove him to short, sharp, savage commands.

Again and again he forgot what it was that he was doing, forgot the ditches which were branching off from the main canal, right and left, as his eyes ran out across the sun-blistered sands, as his fancies ran ahead of them, searching, searching, searching—­and half afraid to find what they sought.  He had seen the questing riders push farther and farther into the desert, had seen them drop out of sight.  Now they were gone; no moving dot told him where their search had taken them, what they had found.  In the middle of an order he found himself breaking off and turning again to the north, looking for the return of the party, hoping to see the men waving their hats that all was well, straining his ears for their reassuring shouts.  And the desert, vast, illimitable, threatening, mysterious, full of dim promise, full of vague threats, gave no sign.

At eleven o’clock he saw one of the men returning.  Why one man alone?  What would be the word which he was bringing?  His heart beat thickly.  His throat was very dry.  He felt a quick pain through it as he tried to swallow.  He lifted his head, and his eyes asked the question of the man who had jerked in his sweating horse at his side.  The rider shook his head.

“Nothin’—­we ain’t found nothin’ yet.  Mundy sent me back.  He says to tell you they’re about ten mile out now, an’ the hosses is gettin’ done up for water.  He says will you send a water-wagon or will you send out a fresh party?”

Conniston’s heart leaped at the man’s first word.  He knew then how he had feared to know what they had found.  And then it sank as fear surged higher into it.  They had not found her yet—­already she had been gone a whole day, a whole night, half the second day—­