“Nothing in or about the pallet?”
“I have made a complete search, sir. There is not a trace of the stone.”
Luvaine broke out with a shriek.
“He has but looked like a sluggard wench. There are fifty places yet. Let me at her!—let me at her, I say!”
“You shall not, by God!” said Tuke.
The wretched creature wrung his hands.
“You would dash the cup from my very lips!” he yelled. “You would drive me mad among ye! I will not be denied!”
He struggled to pass them. They drove him back, and took their stand by the prostrate body.
“The search here has been thorough,” said Tuke. “I watched and I marked. Anywhere else in the chamber you like, sir; but these poor remains rest sacred from further abuse.” (He felt Whimple’s lips upon his hand as he spoke.) “Hunt, sir, hunt while we wait a little longer; yet I fear the stone may have dropped anywhere on her passage hither, and may lie now sunk for ever in the grass of the downs. Hurry, man, if you would look further, and would not have us snowed up to perish beside her that lies here.”
The rabid creature, chattering and foaming, went off on twenty different scents while they waited. Every stone and crevice of the little room he examined—the broken tunnel explored, candle in hand—even re-issued into the thicket and beat wildly about with hand and foot. At length it became evident, even to him, that his search must prove vain. He desisted, with a dead-white face set to his companions, and: “Come,” he said, in a hollow voice, “and conduct me back to the hell I had a little escaped from.”