When Gaston laid his hand gently on his shoulder his lips ceased to move, and he looked at him in a dazed sort of way at first without speaking.
“Oh!—it’s you, Charlie!” he sighed.
“Yes, Tom, tell me quick. Are you sure she is nowhere in the house?”
“Sure!—Sure?” he cried in a helpless stare. “Yes, yes, I found her bonnet at the spring. I looked everywhere for an hour before I called the neighbours!”
“Then I’m off with the searchers. The signal is two guns if they find her alive. One gun if she is dead. You will understand.”
“Yes, Charlie,” answered the old soldier in a faraway tone of voice, “and don’t forget to help me pray while you look for her.”
“I’ve tried already, Tom,” he answered as he pressed his hand and left the house. All night long the search continued, and no signal gun was heard. Torches and lanterns gleamed from every field and wood, byway and hedge for miles in every direction.
Through every hour of this awful night Tom Camp was in his room praying—his face now streaming with tears, now dry and white with the unspoken terror that could stop the beat of his heart. His white hair and snow-white beard were dishevelled, as he unconsciously tore them with his trembling hands. Now he was crying in an agony of intensity, “As thy servant of old wrestled with the angel of the Lord through the night, so, oh God, will I lie at Thy feet and wrestle and pray! I will not let Thee go until Thou bless me! Though I perish, let her live! I have lost all and praised Thee still. Lord, Thou canst not leave me desolate!”
From the pain of his wound and the exhaustion of soul and body he fainted once with his lips still moving in prayer. For more than an hour he lay as one dead. When he revived, he looked at his clock and it was but an hour till dawn.
Again he fell on his knees, and again the broken accents of his husky voice could be heard wrestling with God. Now he would beg and plead like a child, and then he would rise in the unconscious dignity of an immortal soul in combat with the powers of the infinite and his language was in the sublime speech of the old Hebrew seers!