the long strain, rowed to the shore,
and left him alone. As he bade them good-by, he groaned, "Oh, God! will
it never be morning? If only it were light, I am sure I should find some
trace of her." But, when the morning broke, the pitiless lake shone
clear and still, and all the hopelessness of his search flashed on the
bereaved man's mind: he dropped his oars, and gazed vacantly over the
rippleless surface. Then he buried his face in his hands, and sat
motionless for a long time: he was trying to recall Hetty's last looks,
last words. He recollected her last kisses. "It was as if they were to
bid me good-bye," he thought. Presently, he took up the oars and rowed
back to the shore. Old Caesar still sat there on the ground. The doctor
touched him on the shoulder. He lifted a face so wan, so altered, that
the doctor started.

"My poor old fellow," he said, "you ought not to have sat here all
night. We will go home now. There is nothing more to be done."

"Oh, yer ain't a goin' to give up, doctor, be yer?" cried Caesar. "Oh,
don't never give up. She must be here somewheres. Bodies floats allers
in fresh water: she'll come to shore before long. Oh, don't give up!
I'll set here an' watch, an' you go home an' git somethin' to eat. You
looks dreadful."

"No, no, Caesar," the doctor replied, with the first tears he had felt
yet welling up in his eyes, "you must come home with me. There is no
hope of finding her."

Caesar did not move, but fixed a sullen gaze on the water. The doctor
spoke again, more firmly:

"You must come, Caesar. Your mistress would tell you so herself." At this
Caesar rose, docile, and the two went home in silence through the hemlock
woods.

For three days the search for Hetty continued. It was suggested that
possibly she might have gone over to the Springton shore for some
purpose, and there have met with some accident or assault. This
suggestion opened up new vistas of conjecture, almost more terrible than
the certainty of her death would have been. Parties of three and four
scoured the woods in all directions. Again and again Dr. Eben passed
over the spot where she had lain crouched so long: the bushes which had
been brushed back as she passed, bent back again to let him go over her
very footsteps; but nothing could speak to betray her secret. Nature
seems most mute when we most need her help: she keeps, through all our
distresses, a sort of dumb and faithful neutrality, which is not,
perhaps, so