The dog, which had been asleep, got up, and came over to James, and laid his white head on his knee. "We can take him," Aaron said. "Sometimes dogs have more sense than us."
"That is so," said James. He felt himself in an agony of helplessness. He simply did not know what to do. He had sunk into a chair and his head fairly rung. It seemed to him incredible that the girl had disappeared a second time. A queer sense of unreality made him feel faint.
Gordon reëntered the room. "I have told Clara that you have come back, and that Clemency is to stay all night with Annie Lipton," he said. Then he, too, stood staring helplessly. Emma had come into the room, and now she spoke angrily to the three dazed men. "Git the lanterns lit, for goodness' sake," said she, "and hunt and do something. I'm goin' to git her supper, and I'll keep her pacified." Emma gave a jerk with a sharp elbow toward Mrs. Ewing's room. "For goodness' sake, if you don't know yet where she has went, why don't you do somethin'?" [pg 239] she demanded. The men went before her sharp command like dust before her broom. "Keep as still as you can," ordered Emma as they went out. "She mustn't, git to worryin' before she comes home."
"Saw a little dark figure running toward him." Page 239.
For the next two hours Gordon, James, and Aaron searched. They walked, each going his separate way into the fields and woods on the road, having agreed upon a signal when the girl should be found. The signal was to be a pistol shot. James went first to the wood, where he had found Clemency on her former disappearance. He searched in every shadow, throwing the gleam of his lantern into little dark nests of last year's ferns, and hollows where last year's leaves had swirled together to die, but no Clemency. At last, wearied and heart-sick, he came out on the road. The moon was just up, a full moon, and the road lay stretched before him like a silver ribbon covered with the hoar-frost. He gazed down it hopelessly, and saw a little dark figure running toward him. He was incredulous, but he called, "Clemency!"
A glad little cry answered him. He himself ran forward, and the girl was in his arms, sobbing and trembling as if her heart would break.
"What has happened? What has happened, darling?" James cried in an agony. "Are you hurt? What has happened?"
"Something very strange has happened, but I am not hurt," sobbed Clemency. James remembered the signal. "Wait a second, dear," he said; "your uncle and Aaron are searching, and I promised to fire the pistol if I found you." James fired his pistol in the air six times. Then he returned to Clemency, who was leaning against a tree. "How I wish we had driven here!" James said tenderly.
"I can walk, if you help me," Clemency sobbed, leaning against him. "Oh, I am so sorry I acted so this morning. I got punished for it. I haven't been hurt, nobody has been anything but kind to me, but I have been dreadfully frightened."