"Get her for me, then," said Mother. "I don't want to be silly, and you're awfully good. But I must have her; I must have her. I, I want her."
The squire's sons turned as if on an order and went towards the wood. The curate lingered a moment. He was a huge youth, an athlete and a gentleman, and his hard clean-shaven face could be kind and serious.
"We're sure to get her," he said in lower tones. "And you must help us with your faith and courage. Can you?"
Mother's hand tightened on that of Joyce.
"We are doing our best," she said, and smiled she smiled. The curate nodded and went his way to the wood.
A little later in the afternoon came Colonel Warden, the lord and master of all the police in the county, a gay trim soldier whom the children knew and liked. With him, in his big automobile, were more policemen and a pair of queer liver-colored dogs, all baggy skin and bleary eyes bloodhounds! Joyce felt that this really must settle it. Actual living bloodhounds would be more than a match for Joan. Colonel Warden was sure of it too.
"Saves time," he was telling Mother in his high snappy voice. "Shows us which way she's gone, you know. Best hounds in the country, these two; never known 'em fail yet."
The dogs were limp and quiet as he led them through the wood, strange ungainly mechanisms which a whiff of a scent could set in motion. A pinafore, which Joan had worn at breakfast, was served to them for an indication of the work they had to do; they snuffed at it languidly for some seconds. Then the colonel unleashed them.
They smelled round and about like any other dogs for a while, till one of them lifted his great head and uttered a long moaning cry. Then, noses down, the men running behind them, they set off across the ferns. Mother, still holding Joyce's hand, followed. The hounds made a straight line for the wood at the point at which Joan had entered it, slid in like frogs into water, while the men dodged and crashed after them. Joyce and Mother came up with them at a place where the bushes stood back, enclosing a little quiet space of turf that lay open to the sky. The hounds were here, one lying down and scratching himself, the other nosing casually and clearly without interest about him.
"Dash it all," the colonel was saying; "she can't she simply can't have been kidnapped in a balloon."