so much the appearance of
a well kept park or woodland pasture that the lonely wayfarers would
sometimes find themselves all but expecting that the next turn of the
road would bring them in sight of the stately mansion or comfortable
farmhouse to which these beautiful grounds pertained. Nothing of the
kind appearing there, the spot, from the very suggestiveness of the
homelike, would seem to them more desolate than the most unhomelike
parts of the forest.

Often would they pause and call out loudly the name of their boy; the
bare possibility that he might be near and hear them seemed too precious
to be slighted. Saving this, and, from time to time, an inquiry of
affectionate solicitude on the part of the husband, with the wife's
answer of patient reassurance that she was not weary, the two poor
hearts pursued their way in silence. In the course of every four or five
miles they would come to a solitary cabin home like their own, where
they would stop and rouse the sleeping inmates, to inquire if aught had
been seen there of their boy. Twice or thrice they heard, a far way off
in the darkness, sounds that came to their troubled ears like the cries
of a child in distress or terror. But when they had paused to listen,
and had sent the name of their loved one ringing far and wide, naught
had heard they, but the screaming of a night bird wheeling high aloft,
or, peradventure, the distant howling of a wolf abroad on his nightly
foray. At such times, with a look of dumb, distressed perplexity, first
up into their faces, then all around him, old Pow-wow would give a
plaintive whine, as if fully conscious that all was not going well with
his human friends, and that this unwonted journey had a sad reference,
in some way, to his little master. Sometimes dropping down upon his
haunches in the path, some distance in advance, and turning his muzzle
pitifully up to the moon, the affectionate old fellow would howl
outright, long and loud, nor leaving off until his master and mistress
were well up with him again. Thus, in his poor, dumb way, would Pow-wow
testify that he was their fellow-sufferer, grieving and sympathizing
with them and longing so earnestly to do something to help and comfort
them--only but show poor dog how he might set about it.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Pow-Wow Finds Him.

The gray dawn was beginning to take the sun-red glow of morning, when,
quite worn out with so long a walk, the anxious parents arrived at the