didn't I ask John to go look
for them?" she asked herself over and over again. But Mrs. Hedden was
not one to sit weeping with folded hands while anything remained to be
done.

It was not long before their nearest neighbor, who was still at work,
enjoying the coolness of the afternoon, leaned upon his spade to wonder
what on earth neighbor Hedden's wife was up to now.

"Why, look there! Bob," he called out to his son, "if she ain't leaping
over this way like a year-old colt!"

In the mean time, neighbor Hedden himself was having but sorry sport in
the forest. He saw nothing worth even pointing his gun at, and felt
altogether so ill at ease and so fidgety as he trudged along, stepping
now upon the soft moss, and now upon fallen branches that crackled even
under the stealthy tread of his hunting moccasins, that I doubt whether
half the bears hidden in the depths of the forest were not in a livelier
mood than he. Not that he had anything to make him feel especially
ill-humored, unless it was the disobedience of his children in having
failed to appear at dinner-time--but it seemed to him that there was
something going wrong in the world, some screw loose in his affairs
that, unless he turned it tight in time, would cause his happiness and
the prosperity of his home to fall in ruins about him. After awhile this
feeling became so strong that he seated himself upon a stone to think.

"I haven't been as neighborly as I might have been," he reflected:
"there's many a turn been wanting by these new-comers, the Morrises,
that I might have tended to, if I hadn't been so wrapped up in my own
affairs. Come to think, almost the only kindness I've done for nearly a
year past was in giving a bag of potatoes to that sick fellow,
Po-no-kah, who seemed to me to be a good fellow, as Indians go. However,
it ain't much kindness to give to those murderous red-skins when there's
plenty of white men wanting help. Well, if I'm not agoin' to shoot
anything, I guess I'd better go home."

With these last words, uttered half aloud, neighbor Hedden arose, and
walked a few steps in the direction of his home. Presently he paused
again, muttering to himself--

"It's blamed queer I haven't heard the youngsters coming down with the
scow; I certainly should have heard them if they'd passed anywhere
near--guess I'd best walk on a little way up stream."

So saying, he turned, with a new anxiety upon his countenance, and moved
with rapid strides towar