“I put her plate in the oven,” said Aunt Jemima, in a hollow voice, as she rose from her seat.
“Ah!” gasped the father. The little plate had become hot and cold again, and its contents were quite dried up. Aunt Jemima put the plate upon the oven-top; and then turned, and looked conscience-stricken into her brother’s face. Severe towards herself, as towards others, she unflinchingly acknowledged her great fault.
“Brother, your child is gone; and I have driven her away.”
She lifted her hands on either side of her head, and gently swayed herself to and fro once—a grim gesture of despair.
“I do not ask you to forgive me. It is not to be expected of you—unless she comes back again. If she does not, I shall never forgive myself.”
“Jemima,” said “Cobbler” Horn, rising from his seat, and placing his hand lightly on her shoulder, “You are too severe with yourself. That the child is lost is evident enough; but surely she may be found! I will go to the police authorities: they will help us.”
He turned to the door, but paused with his hand on the latch.
“Jemima,” he said, gently, “you must not talk about my not forgiving you. I would try to forgive my greatest enemy, much more my own sister, who has but done what she believed to be best.”
The authorities at the police-station did what they could. Messages were sent to every police centre in the town; and very soon every policeman on his beat was on the look-out for the missing child. At the same time, an officer was told off to accompany the anxious father on a personal search for his little girl. First of all, they visited the casual ward at the workhouse, and astonished its motley and dilapidated occupants by waking them to ask if they had fallen in with a strayed child on any of the roads by which they had severally approached the town. When they had recovered from their first alarm beneath the gleam of the policeman’s bulls-eye, these waifs of humanity, one and all, declared their inability to supply the desired information. The officer next conducted his companion into the courts and bye-ways of the town. Many a den of infamy was filled with a quiver of alarm, and many a haunt of poverty was made to uncover its wretchedness before the horrified gaze of “Cobbler” Horn. But the missing child was not in any of these. Next they went a little way out on one or two of the country roads. But here all was dark: and they soon retraced their steps.
Having ascertained that nothing had been heard at the police-station of his child, “Cobbler” Horn at length turned homeward, in the early morning, with a weary heart. Miss Jemima was still sitting where he had left her, and he sadly shook his head in response to the appeal of her dark hollow eyes. During the hour or so which remained before dawn, “Cobbler” Horn restlessly paced the house, pausing, now and then, to open the front-door and step out into the street, that he might listen for the returning patter of the two little feet that had wandered away.