Having completed his dirge of the night, Tico, nose to the snow, went trotting away.
“He’s on the trail of the great banshee!” The girl gripped her breast to still her heart’s wild beating. “Sha—shall I follow? Dare I?”
She answered her own question by again taking up the trail.
A quarter mile farther on, she came to that which made her start and stare. A little to one side of the trail, a dark spot stood out against the whiteness of the earth’s snow blanket.
“A—a mitten,” she said, picking it up. “It, why it—” again she strove in vain to still her heart. “It’s Johnny’s!”
Who can say what wild thoughts surged through her breast as she stood there in the snow beneath the starry heavens, alone in a vast hostile wilderness?
Whatever they may have been, they at last urged her on at redoubled speed. So, half walking, half running, she came at last to the brink of the river. And there catastrophe befell her.
At this point on his long journey the hunchback had descended a sloping bank of snow to travel for a time upon the river’s ice which was still frozen to the bank. Since his passing, the ice had broken away. Many yards of his trail had gone floating downstream.
Knowing nothing of this, the girl tried in vain to discover the way he had gone.
“He can’t have taken to the river,” she told herself. “Still, there may have been a boat. There—”