hoe into the water as soon as it was dark
enough for her to do this unseen. As she had to approach the river by
her own grounds, and as she was obliged to choose a place sufficiently
remote from the lights about the dock not to incur the risk of being
detected in her hazardous attempt, the shoe fell at a spot farther down
stream than the searchers had yet reached, and the intense excitement I
had myself seen in Mrs. Ocumpaugh's face the day I made my first visit
to Homewood, sprang from the agony of suspense with which she watched,
after twenty-four hours of alternating expectation and disappointment,
the finding of this second shoe which, with fanatic confidence, she
hoped would bring all the confirmation to be desired of her oft-repeated
declaration that the child would yet be found in the river.

Meanwhile, to the infinite dismay of both, the matter had been placed in
the hands of the police and word sent to Mr. Ocumpaugh, not that the
child was dead, but missing. This meant world-wide publicity and the
constant coming and going about Homewood of the very men whose insight
and surveillance were most to be dreaded. Mrs. Ocumpaugh sank under the
terrors thus accumulating upon her; but Mrs. Carew, of different
temperament and history, rose to meet them with a courage which bade
fair to carry everything before it.

As midnight approached (the hour agreed upon in their compact) she
prepared to go for Gwendolen. Mrs. Ocumpaugh, who had not forgotten what
was expected of her at that hour, roused as the clock struck twelve, and
uttering a loud cry, rushed from her place in the window down to the
lawn, calling out that she had heard the men shout aloud from the boats.
Her plan was to draw every one who chanced to be about, down to the
river bank, in order to give Mrs. Carew full opportunity to go and come
unseen on her dangerous errand. And she apparently succeeded in this,
for by the time she had crept back in seeming disappointment to the
house, a light could be seen burning behind a pink shade in one of Mrs.
Carew's upper windows--the signal agreed upon between them of the
presence of Gwendolen in her new home.

But small was the relief as yet. The shoe had not been found, and at any
moment some intruder might force his way into Mrs. Carew's house and, in
spite of all her precautions, succeed in obtaining a view of the little
Harry and recognize in him the missing child.

Of these same precautions some mention must be m