At length a light began to blink in the gloom ahead and soon afterward she got down at the homestead, feeling very cramped and cold; but an hour or two passed before she had an opportunity for speaking to her father alone. It was easy to lead him on to talk of Cyril’s disappearance, and by and by she asked if the neighborhood of Prescott’s homestead had been searched. He caught at the idea.
“It’s hard to understand why I didn’t think of that!” he cried. “I have lost all confidence in Curtis. What he is doing, or if he means to let the matter drop, I don’t know; but if Prescott has hidden anything that might tell against him, it will of course be in the bluff! I’ll go over and examine every hollow among the bushes, without the police.”
His expression grew eager and Gertrude, knowing that she had said enough, left him quietly.
CHAPTER XXII
JERNYNGHAM MAKES A DISCOVERY
A piercing wind swept the lonely waste when Jernyngham left the homestead in the afternoon. He went on foot, because it was no great distance to the Prescott farm, and he had no wish to attract notice by driving up in the sleigh. It was his intention to enter the bluff quietly a little while before it got dark and, after searching it, to walk home. By doing so he would run less risk of being seen, for it was undesirable that he should put Prescott on his guard. He had said nothing about his plan to any one except Gertrude, which was unfortunate, because Leslie, who could read the signs of the weather, would have dissuaded him.
Jernyngham felt uneasy as he glanced across the plain. There was something unusual in the light: every clump of scrub and bush in the foreground stood out with a curious hard distinctness, though the distance was blurred and dim. There was no horizon; the bluffs a few miles off had faded into a hazy shapelessness. The sky was uniformly gray, except in the north, where it darkened to a deep leaden color; the cold struck through the man like a knife. He was, however, not to be deterred; snow was coming and a heavy fall might make an effective search impossible for the remainder of the winter. There was something inexorable in his nature; his views were narrow, but he was true to them and ruled himself and his dependents in accordance with a few fixed principles. This was why he had driven out his son, and was now with the same grim consistency bent on avenging him. He had a duty and he meant to discharge it, in spite of raging blizzard or biting frost. Indeed, if need be, he was willing to lay down the dreary life which had of late grown valueless to him. Yet he was not without tenderness, and as he plodded on over the frozen snow, he thought of the lost outcast with wistful regret.
He reached the bluff, and stopped a few moments, slightly breathless, among the first of the trees. They were small and their branches cut in sharp, intricate tracery against the sky; farther back, the rows of slender trunks ran together in a hazy mass, though they failed to keep out the wind, and once or twice a fine flake touched the old man’s face with a cold that stung. He pulled his fur cap lower down and set about the search. For half an hour he scrambled among thick nut bushes, kicking aside the snow beneath them here and there; and then he plunged knee-deep into the withered grass where a sloo had dried. The snow was thin in the wood, but it hid the iron-hard ground so that he could not tell if it had been disturbed. It was obvious that the chances were against his discovering anything, but he persevered, working steadily nearer to the homestead, of which he once or twice caught a glimpse where the trees were thinner.