"He'll come back," said Ogden.
"Please, sir, I'm rather feared about him," said Jim; "it's nearly two hours sin' he left the house, and it's uncommon cold. We've been seekin' him all up and down, old Sarah and me, and he's nowhere about th' premises, and he isn't about th' rocks neither."
Mr. Ogden began to feel rather alarmed. The paroxysm of his irritation was over by this time, and he had become rational again; indeed his mind was clearer, and, in a certain sense, calmer, than it had been for two or three days. For the last half-hour he had been suffering only from great prostration, and a feeling of dulness and vacancy, which this new anxiety effectually removed. Notwithstanding the violence of his recent treatment of his son—a violence which had frequently broken out during several months, and which had culminated in the scene described in the last chapter, when it had reached the pitch of temporary insanity—he really had the deepest possible affection for his child, and this paternal feeling was more powerful than he himself had ever consciously known or acknowledged. When once the idea was realized that little Jacob might be suffering physically from the cold, and mentally from a dread of his father, which the events of the night only too fully justified, Mr. Ogden began to feel the tenderest care and anxiety. "I'll be down with you in a moment," he said. "See that the lanterns are in good order. Have the dogs ready to go with us—they may be of some use."
He came downstairs with a serious but quite reasonable expression on his face. He spoke quite gently to old Sarah, and said, with a half-smile, "You needn't give me a lantern with a hole in it this time;" and then he added, "I wasted all that rum you gave me."
"It 'ud 'ave been worst wasted if you'd swallowed it, Mestur."
"It would—it would; but we may need a little for the lad if we find him—very cold, you know. Give a little to Jim, if you have any; and take a railway rug, or a blanket from my bed, to wrap him in if he should need it."
The dogs were in the kitchen now—a large mastiff and a couple of pointers. Mr. Ogden took down a little cloak that belonged to Jacob, and made the dogs smell at it. Then he seemed to be looking about for something else.
"Are ye seekin' something, Mr. Ogden?"
"I want something to make a noise with, Sarah." She fetched the little silver horn that had been the Doctor's last present to his young friend. "That's it," said Mr. Ogden; "he'll know the sound of that when he hears it."
The little party set out towards the moor. Mr. Ogden led it to the place where Jacob had crossed the wall; and as Jim was looking about with his lantern he called out, "Why, master, here's one of his shoes, and—summat else."