The house, kitchen, out-buildings, negro quarters, garden, vineyard, orchard, the plantation and the woods were successively and vainly searched.
Messengers were dispatched to Hardbargain and to the neighboring plantations, with inquiries that proved fruitless.
Old Mr. Clifton ran up and down the house and grounds like one distracted.
At last, near night, traces were discovered of the lost one. Upon the edge of the stream, where the banks were soft and deep, small foot-prints were seen—and half-way down the bank her little slipper was found, with its toe deep in the mud, and the heel sticking up, as if lost there in the downward run of its owner—and from the branch of a sapling near, a shred of her crimson dress fluttered, as if caught and torn off in the same swift descent.
Old Mr. Clifton walked down there, to see the spot; but he was carried back.
And before the next sun arose, Mrs. Georgia Clifton had her heart’s first desire.
She was a widow.
CHAPTER XIX.
CONFESSION.
I was so young—I loved him so—I had
No mother—God forgot me—and I fell!