CHAPTER XIII.
THE LAST.
NOT many days after this, a sad and anxious group of people stood beside the ruins of the Heron cottage. Joe Brazybone, or the distracted ghost of him, the trustee, who had thrown over everything else and come with Joe, and the young missionary. The latter had come to visit the school only the day after Isla’s flight; what more natural than that she should join in the search? The trustee had gladly acceded to her petition that she might accompany him. “Yes, yes!” he said; “a woman is the thing. A woman can make her listen; poor lost lamb! Miss Stewart cannot leave her post, and you are the very one we need.”
Here they stood now, looking blankly about them. They had heard, in the village, of the cottage having been burned soon after the Heron children left it, by some wanton boys, who had dared each other to eat their supper in the “Witch-house,” and had built a fire carelessly, and fled when they saw the mischief they had wrought. No one had seen Isla since her return, though one and another had made search for her. Captain Ezekiel spent all the time between the two last trips in searching and calling. He fancied he saw her once, but, if it were she, she had fled at sight or sound of him, and it might have been a young lamb, he said, running quick and light through the woods. He brought food with him, and left it near the ashes of the cottage; when he came again, it was gone, and he hoped the child had taken it.
Where should search begin? The trustee looked about him, hopelessly. If the islanders themselves could not find the lost girl, what could he, a stranger, hope to do? His face brightened as he turned to look at Joe. The man was questing here and there like a hound, spying at every tree, catching at every bent leaf or broken twig. His eyes were closed to sharp blue points, and their glance pierced where it struck. Suddenly he stopped and threw up his head, and, in all his distress, the trustee thought again that the creature wanted a tail to wag, and pitied him his mistaken humanity.
“She’s passed here!” said Joe, speaking for the first time, in a thick, husky voice. “She’s passed here, gentleman and preacher, Isly has. I knowed it before, but I wanted to make surer than sure. Look at here!”
He held up two or three shells strung together, and they recognized part of a shell bracelet that Isla always wore. Joe’s great hand shook as he held it up, and the breath hissed through his teeth.
“We’ll find her, sir!” he said, putting the shells in his bosom. “We’ll find Isly this day. If she’s willin’, that is!” he added, turning upon them almost savagely. “This hull island is Isly Heron’s own dooryard, I want ye to understand, gentleman and preacher. She’s to home here, to go where she likes and do as she likes, and I’d like to see any one try to hender her. She lets common folks live up to the fur end, and that’s because she’s the lady she is. Brazybones know, I tell ye; Brazybones know Herons! And if she don’t want us to find her, why then she won’t be found. But I hope,—” his voice broke and faltered, and the glare died out of his eyes,—“I’m in hopes that my young lady will let us pass the time o’ day with her, seein’ we come so fur, and there’s things old Joe wants to explain to her. There’s things he’s got to say to her, I tell ye. There! we’re losin’ time while I’m palaverin’ here. You foller me, gentleman and lady, and foller soft, if you ever went soft in yer lives!”
He led the way, the others following, through the little Home Valley, as Isla called it, through a narrow rocky pass and over a great brown hill, down into the Dead Valley, which lay beyond. The trustee looked about him with amazement, for, though he had travelled far, he had never seen such a place as this on the earth. He would have asked some questions, but Joe waved him on with feverish eagerness.
“Look here!” he said. “She’s been here, and not so long ago. Look at the yew-bed, here!”