“Oh, Tom,” she sobbed, crying as if her heart would break, “if any harm has befallen our darling I shall not survive it.”
“Why do you take such a gloomy view of a trivial absence from home?” he asked, though his voice did not bear out the carelessness of his words. “You know well enough what an extraordinary child Millicent is. We can never tell what queer thing she may be doing.”
Mam was not to be comforted in that way.
“Millicent has always asked permission if she wished to be away at meal time, and Dandy is not with her. I would not be so frightened if the dog had gone, too. Tom, what shall we do if she is not home before it is dark? I shall go mad.”
Dorothy was weeping also, and I heard Evangeline snivel something about them there black villains as was up to no good, she was sure. That was the worst thing she could have said. Mam simply refused to remain in the house when the light failed. She was going to ask Captain Stanhope’s help, she declared. He knew a good deal about these negroes, and she was certain he would move heaven and earth to discover Minkie’s whereabouts, because he loved the child as if she were his own sister.
The Guv’nor saw that Mam was not fit to venture out, so he persuaded her to let him go to the Manor and see Jack. Schwartz, who was really beside himself with anxiety, tried hard to console Mam and Dorothy during the Guv’nor’s absence, though he personally was in a fine pickle which they knew nothing of.
He was afraid Minkie had been attacked, either on account of the ju-ju or the money he had given her, but he simply dared not say anything about his suspicions. At last, after an hour that had a thousand minutes, the Guv’nor returned. Mam saw by her first glance at his face that he brought bad news. She gave a deep sigh, and fainted clean away.
I heard Bob telling Dan something outside, but I was forced to listen to what the Guv’nor was saying to Schwartz, while Dorothy and Evangeline and Cookie were trying to revive Mam.
“It’s a bad business, I fear,” he whispered, holding on to the back of a chair like a man who thinks he may fall. “I met Stanhope and his uncle at the Manor, and even the older Stanhope was aghast when I told him my errand. It was the first they had heard of Minkie’s disappearance, and Jack is now procuring the arrest of every negro in Dale End.”
“I would like to burn them alive,” broke in Schwartz, and he meant it, too, for he was on the rack.