'I meant to turn the lassieky,' the stone-breaker explained, 'but, ou, she was past in a twinklin'.'
On the saw-mill brig the minister quickly organised a search party, the brig that Rob had floored anew but the week before, rising daily with the sun to do it, because the child's little boot had caught in a worn board. From it she had often crooned to watch the dank mill-wheel climbing the bouncing burn. Ah, Rob, the rotten old planks would have served your turn.
'The Whunny road' were the words passed from mouth to mouth, and the driblet of men fell into line.
Impetuous is youth, and the minister was not perhaps greatly to blame for starting at once. But Lang Tammas, his chief elder, paused on the threshold.
'The Lord giveth,' he said solemnly, taking off his hat and letting the night air cut through his white hair, 'and the Lord taketh away: blessed be the name of the Lord.'
The saw-miller opened his mouth, but no words came.
The little search party took the cold Whunny road. The day had been bright and fine, and still there was a smell of flowers in the air. The fickle flowers! They had clustered round Davy and nestled on her neck when she drew the half-ashamed saw-miller through the bleating meadows, and now they could smile on him when he came alone—all except the daisies. The daisies, that cannot play a child false, had craned their necks to call Davy back as she tripped over them, and bowed their heavy little heads as she toddled on. It was from them that the bairn's track was learned after she wandered from the Whunny road.
By and by the hills ceased to echo their wailing response to Hobart's bell.
Far in the rear of the more eager searchers, the bellman and the joiner had found a seat on a mossy bank, and others, footsore and weary, had fallen elsewhere from the ranks. The minister and half a dozen others scattered over the fields and on the hillsides, despondent, but not daring to lag. Tinkers cowered round their kettles under threatening banks, and the squirrels were shadows gliding from tree to tree.
At a distant smithy a fitful light still winked to the wind, but the farm lamps were out and all the land was hushed. It was now long past midnight in country parts.