use it was no great distance to
the Prescott farm, and he had no wish to attract notice by driving up in
the sleigh. It was his intention to enter the bluff quietly a little
while before it got dark and, after searching it, to walk home. By doing
so he would run less risk of being seen, for it was undesirable that he
should put Prescott on his guard. He had said nothing about his plan to
any one except Gertrude, which was unfortunate, because Leslie, who could
read the signs of the weather, would have dissuaded him.

Jernyngham felt uneasy as he glanced across the plain. There was
something unusual in the light: every clump of scrub and bush in the
foreground stood out with a curious hard distinctness, though the
distance was blurred and dim. There was no horizon; the bluffs a few
miles off had faded into a hazy shapelessness. The sky was uniformly
gray, except in the north, where it darkened to a deep leaden color; the
cold struck through the man like a knife. He was, however, not to be
deterred; snow was coming and a heavy fall might make an effective search
impossible for the remainder of the winter. There was something
inexorable in his nature; his views were narrow, but he was true to them
and ruled himself and his dependents in accordance with a few fixed
principles. This was why he had driven out his son, and was now with the
same grim consistency bent on avenging him. He had a duty and he meant to
discharge it, in spite of raging blizzard or biting frost. Indeed, if
need be, he was willing to lay down the dreary life which had of late
grown valueless to him. Yet he was not without tenderness, and as he
plodded on over the frozen snow, he thought of the lost outcast with
wistful regret.

He reached the bluff, and stopped a few moments, slightly breathless,
among the first of the trees. They were small and their branches cut in
sharp, intricate tracery against the sky; farther back, the rows of
slender trunks ran together in a hazy mass, though they failed to keep
out the wind, and once or twice a fine flake touched the old man's face
with a cold that stung. He pulled his fur cap lower down and set about
the search. For half an hour he scrambled among thick nut bushes, kicking
aside the snow beneath them here and there; and then he plunged knee-deep
into the withered grass where a sloo had dried. The snow was thin in the
wood, but it hid the iron-hard ground so that he could not tell if it had
been disturbed. It