Mrs. McDougall bustled about, and got the breakfast—porridge without milk—set everything in order, then went up to see to her mother, just as if nothing had happened. She was not the woman to sit idly nursing her troubles.
As soon as she had partaken of a little food, she prepared to depart once more on her anxious errand, with many an injunction to Robbie not to go outside the gate, and to keep a watch, in case Elsie and Duncan might return, but be afraid to enter.
At the police-station there was no news. Bills were being printed, she was informed, and would be widely distributed before the day was out. Any information they received should be sent to her.
She waited for more than an hour in order to see the bill. It was some sort of consolation to her to see the great black letters, and read the description of the children in black and white.
"This cannot fail to find them," the officer told her. "Every police office in the country will be furnished with this description. The children can't have got very far away. Some of our men must come across them."
"Far enough away to have got beyond our reach," Mrs. McDougall said, dubiously. "And who knows but they may have fallen into bad hands, or got stuck in some bog in the blackness of the night?" she added, with a shudder.
"They'd keep fast enough to the road," the man said, re-assuringly.
"I'd rather ten times over that they should be lying dead in the woods or on a mountain side than that they should fall into the hands of wicked men and women!" Mrs. McDougall said fervently. "The mercies of God are a deal more tender than those of men. I could thank God with all my heart to know that He had them safe."
"There are bad enough folk about," the policeman assented, "but your children are over young to get led astray."
"I pray the Almighty that He'll grant them a merciful death rather than they should fall into bad hands," Mrs. McDougall said, wearily, as she rose to go. "Better for them to die of cold than to be murdered by violence, or made to lie and steal."