A moment later he added:
"No; for the very reason that it is dangerous, Dollie would run across; it would be no trouble for her to do so, and there is just enough peril to tempt her. Could she have fallen in?"
He looked at the dark water as it swept forward and shivered.
"Rivers and lakes and seas and streams are always thirsting for human life, and this may have seized her."
Tramping through the undergrowth that lined the bank he fought his way onward until he stood beside the rocks where the waters made a foaming cascade, as they dashed downward toward the mills far away.
"If she did fall in, she must be somewhere near this spot——"
His heart seemed to stop beating. Surely that dark object, half submerged and lying against the edge of the bank, where the water made an eddy, must be her body. He ran thither and stooped down.
"Thank God," was his exclamation, after touching it with his hands, and finding it a piece of dark wood that had been carried there from the regions above.
Back he came to where the fallen tree spanned the creek, and hurried across. No snow was falling, but the earth was white with the thin coating that had filtered down hours before.
"Had it come earlier in the day," he thought, "it would help us to trace her, but now it will hide her footprints."