"All my life, Mrs. Thayor."
Before she could speak the girl leaned over and hid her face on her mother's shoulder. A light broke over the mother's face; then she found her voice.
"And it is true, Margaret?" she said, smoothing the girl's cheek.
"What will your father say?"
"He knows I love Billy," she whispered, as she threw her arms around her mother's neck and burst into tears.
A grave and ominous anxiety now took possession of the camp. That something must be done, and at once, to find Thayor, had become evident as the night began to settle. But no man in the camp lagged. Billy and the trapper were busy tearing long strips of yellow bark from a birch tree for torches, while the Clown, who had been hurriedly cutting two forked sticks, stood fitting them with the twisted bark. For some moments the three woodsmen held a low and earnest conversation together, Alice watching them with startled eyes. She caught also the figure of the trapper and the old dog standing at the limit of the firelight waiting for Holcomb, and the flare of the two bark torches that the old man held in his hands.
At that instant the old dog sprang into the darkness beyond the trapper, barking sharply. Holcomb, followed by Margaret, who had never left his side since he had determined to go in search of her father, rushed forward, following the waning light from the torches now glimmering far ahead as the trapper leaped on after the old dog.
Alice, now left alone with Blakeman and Annette, sat peering into the void, her ears open to every sound. Every now and then she would rise, walk to the edge of the firelight, stand listening for a few moments and sink back again on her seat by the embers.
Suddenly Blakeman rose to his feet, his hand cupped to his ear, his whole body tense. His knowledge of the woods had taught him their unusual sounds. Stepping quickly over the surrounding logs, he moved to the edge of the darkness and listened, then walked quickly into the blackness.
The dim flicker of approaching torches, like will-o'-the-wisps, now flashed among the giant trees. Alice sprang up, caught the end of the long overcoat in her fingers and, guided by the sound of Blakeman's footsteps, calling to him at every step, dashed on into the darkness. Then she tripped, and with a piercing shriek fell headlong.
A posse of men were approaching. The torches drew nearer and nearer—voices could be heard. She strained her ears—but it was not that of her husband. Again she staggered to her feet, reeled, and would have fallen had not Blakeman caught her. He had seen the party and turned back before he reached them.