“Ye’re not knowin’ how t’ search,” he complained. “Ye’re but a pack o’ dunderheads!”
“Come, sir!” I pleaded.
“Is ye been t’ Skeleton Droch?” he demanded. “She’ve a habit o’ readin’ there. No!” he growled, in a temper; “you isn’t had the sense t’ go t’ Skeleton Droch.”
“A dram, sir,” I ventured, “t’ comfort you.”
“An’ ye bide here, ye dunderhead!” he accused.
I put my hand on his shoulder: he flung it off. I took his arm: he wrenched himself free in an indignant passion.
“Ye’re needin’ it, sir,” says I.
“For God’s sake, child!” he cried; “do you go find the maid an’ leave me be. God knows I’ve trouble enough without ye!”
The maid was not at Skeleton Droch: neither on the hills, nor in the hiding-places of the valleys, nor lying broken on the ledges of the cliffs, nor swinging in the sea beneath––nor was she anywhere on the land of Twin Islands or in the waters that restlessly washed the boundary of gray rock. ’Twas near evening now, and a dreary, angrily windy time. Our men gathered from shore and inland barren––and there was no Judith, nor cold, wet body of Judith, anywhere to be found. ’Twas unthinkingly whispered, then, that the maid had fled with John Cather on the mail-boat: this on Tom Tulk’s Head, in its beginning, and swiftly passed from tongue to tongue. Being overwrought when I caught the surmise––’twas lusty young Jack Bluff that uttered it before me––I persuaded the youth of his error, which, upon rising, he admitted, as did they all of that group, upon my request, forgiving me, too, I think, the cruel abruptness of my argument, being men of feeling, every one. The maid was not gone with John Cather, she was not on the hills of Twin Islands; she was then fled to Topmast Harbor for self-support, that larger 310 settlement, whence many Labradormen put out at this season for the northerly fishing. And while, sheltered from the rising wind, the kind men-folk of our harbor talked with my uncle and me on Eli Flack’s stage, there came into the tickle from Topmast Harbor, in quest of water, a punt and a man, being bound, I think, for Jimmie Tick’s Cove. ’Twas by him reported that a maid of gentle breeding had come alone in a punt to Topmast in the night. And her hair? says I. She had hair, and a wonderful sight of it, says he. And big, blue eyes? says I. She had eyes, says he; an’ she had a nose, so far as he could tell, which had clapped eyes on the maid, an’ she had teeth an’ feet, himself being able to vouch for the feet, which clipped it over the Topmast roads quite lively, soon after dawn, in search of a schooner bound down the Labrador.