Johnny Ludlow Third Series Part 103

"I did not tell her of it," said Miss Timmens. "I went on by myself to her house; and the first thing I saw there, on opening the door, was a little pair of slippers warming on the fender. 'Oh, have you brought Nettie?' began the mother, before I could speak: 'I've got her shoes warm for her. Is she very, very cold?--and has she enjoyed herself and been good?' Well, sir, seeing how it was--that the child had not got home--I answered lightly: 'Oh, the children are not here yet; my sister and Maria Lease are with them. I've just stepped on to see how your bruises are getting on.' For that poor Sarah Trewin is good for so little that one does not care to alarm her," concluded Miss Timmens, as if she would apologize for her deceit.

The Squire nodded approval, and told me to give Miss Timmens something hot to drink. Mrs. Todhetley, looking three parts frightened out of her wits, asked what was to be done.

Yes; what was to be done? What could be done? A sort of council was held amongst them, some saying one thing, some another. It seemed impossible to suggest anything.

"Had harm come to her in running home, had she fallen into the snow, for instance, or anything of that sort, we should have seen or heard her," observed Miss Timmens. "She would be sure to take the direct path--the way we came here and returned."

"It might be easy enough for the child to lose her way--the roads and fields are like a wide white plain," observed Mrs. Coney. "She might have strayed aside amongst the trees in the triangle."

Miss Timmens shook her head in dissent.

"She'd not do that, ma'am. Since Daniel Ferrar was found there, the children don't like the three-cornered grove."

"Look here," said old Coney, suddenly speaking up. "Let us search all these places, and any others that she could have strayed to, right or left, on her road home."

He rose up, and we rose with him. It was the best thing that could be done: and no end of a relief, besides, to pitch upon something to do.

The Squire ordered Mackintosh (who had not recovered himself yet) to bring a lantern, and we all put on our great-coats and went forth, leaving the mater and Mrs. Coney to keep the fire warm. A black party we looked, in the white snow, Miss Timmens making one of us.

"I can't rest," she whispered to me. "If the child has been lying on the snow all this while, we shall find her dead."

It was a still, cold, lovely night; the moon high in the sky, the snow lying white and pure beneath her beams. Tom Coney and Tod, all their better feelings and their fears aroused, plunged on fiercely, now amidst the deep snow by the hedges, now on the more level path. The grove, which had been so fatal to poor Daniel Ferrar, was examined first. And now we saw the use of the lantern ordered by the Squire, at which order we had secretly laughed: for it served to light up the darker parts where the trunks of the trees grew thick. Mackintosh, who hated that grove, did not particularly relish his task of searching it, though he was in good company. But it did not appear to contain Nettie.

"She would not turn in here," repeated Miss Timmens, from the depth of her strong conviction; "I'm sure she wouldn't. She would rather bear onwards towards her mother's."

Bounding here, trudging there, calling her name softly, shouting loudly, we continued our search after Nettie Trewin. It was past twelve when we got back home and met Mrs. Todhetley and Mrs. Coney at the door, both standing there in their uneasiness, enveloped in woollen shawls.

"No. No success. Can't find her anywhere."

Down sank the Squire on one of the hall-chairs as he spoke, as though he could not hold himself up a minute longer, but was dead beat with tramping and disappointment. Perhaps he was. What was to be done next?

What _could_ be done? We stood round the dining-room fire, looking at one another like so many helpless mummies.

"Well," said the pater, "the first thing is to have a drop of something hot. I am half-frozen. What time's that?"--as the clock over the mantelpiece chimed one stroke. "Half-past twelve."

"And she's dead by this time," gasped Miss Timmens, in a faint voice, its sharpness gone clean out of it. "I'm thinking of the poor widowed mother."

Mrs. Coney (often an invalid) said she could do no good by staying longer, and wanted to be in bed. Old Coney said _he_ was not going in yet; so Tom took her over. It might have been ten minutes after this--but I was not taking any particular account of the time--that I saw Tom Coney put his head in at the parlour-door, and beckon Tod out.

I went also.

"Look here," said Coney to us. "After I left mother indoors, I thought I'd search a bit about the back-ground here: and I fancy I can see the marks of a child's footsteps in the snow."

"No!" cried Tod, rushing out at the back-door and crossing the premises to the field.

Yes, it was so. Just for a little way along the path leading to Crabb Ravine the snow was much trodden and scattered by the footsteps of a man, both to and fro. Presently some little footsteps, evidently of a child, seemed to diverge from this path and go onwards in rather a slanting direction through the deeper snow, as if their owner had lost the direct way. When we had tracked these steps half-way across the field. Tod brought himself to a halt.

"I'm sure they are Nettie's," he said. "They look like hers. Whose else should they be? She may have fallen down the Ravine. One of you had better go back and bring a blanket--and tell them to get hot water ready."

Eager to be of use, Tom Coney and I ran back together. Tod continued his tracking. Presently the little steps diverged towards the path, as if they had suddenly discovered their wanderings from it; and then they seemed to be lost in those other and larger footsteps which had kept steadily to the path.

"I wonder," thought Tod, halting as he lost the clue, "whether Mackintosh's big ghost could have been this poor little white-robed child? What an idiotic coward the fellow is! These are his footmarks. A slashing pace he must have travelled at, to fling the snow up in this manner!"

At that moment, as Tod stood facing the Ravine, a light, looking like the flame of a candle, small and clear and bright as that of a glow-worm, appeared on the opposite bank, and seemed to dodge about the snow-clad brushwood around the trunks of the wintry trees. What was this light?--whence did it proceed?--what caused it? It seemed we were never tired of putting these useless questions to ourselves. Tod did not know; never had known. He thought of Mack's fright and of the ghost, as he stood watching it, now disappearing in some particular spot, now coming again at ever so many yards' distance. But ghosts had no charms for Tod: by which I mean no alarms: and he went forward again, trying to find another trace of the little footsteps.

"I don't see what should bring Nettie out here, though," ran his thoughts. "Hope she has not pitched head foremost down the Ravine!

Confound the poltroon!--kicking up the snow like this!"

But now, in another minute, there were traces again. The little feet seemed to have turned aside at a tangent, and once more sought the deep snow. From that point he did not again lose them; they carried him to the low and narrow dell (not much better than a ditch) which just there skirted the hedge bordering the Ravine.

At first Tod could see nothing. Nothing but the drifted snow.

But--looking closely--what was that, almost at his feet? Was it only a dent in the snow?--or was anything lying on it? Tod knelt down on the deep soft white carpet (sinking nearly up to his waist) and peered and felt.

There she was: Nettie Trewin! With her flaxen curls fallen about her head and mingling with the snow, and her little arms and neck exposed, and her pretty white frock all wet, she lay there in the deep hole. Tod, his breast heaving with all manner of emotion, gathered her into his arms, as gently as an infant is hushed to rest by its mother. The white face had no life in it; the heart seemed to have stopped beating.

"Wake up, you poor little mite!" he cried, pressing her against his warm side. "Wake up, little one! Wake up, little frozen snow-bird!"

But there came no response. The child lay still and white in his arms.

"Hope she's not frozen to death!" he murmured, a queer sensation taking him. "Nettie, don't you hear me? My goodness, what's to be done?"

He set off across the field with the child, meeting me almost directly.

I ran straight up to him.

"Get out, Johnny Ludlow!" he cried roughly, in his haste and fear.

"Don't stop me! Oh, a blanket, is it? That's good. Fold it round her, lad."

"Is she dead?"

"I'll be shot if I know."

He went along swiftly, holding her to him in the blanket. And a fine commotion they all made when he got her indoors.

The silly little thing, unable to get over her shyness, had taken the opportunity, when the back-door was open, to steal out of it, with the view of running home to her mother. Confused, perhaps, by the bare white plain; or it may be by her own timidity; or probably confounding the back-door and its approaches with the front, by which she had entered, she went straight across the field, unconscious that this was taking her in just the opposite direction to her home. It was she whom Luke Mackintosh had met--the great idiot!--and he frightened her with his rough appearance and the bellow of fear he gave, just as much as she had frightened him. Onwards she went, blindly terrified, was stopped by the hedge, fell into the ditch, and lay buried in the snow. Whether she could be brought back to life, or whether death had really taken her, was a momentous question.

I went off for Cole, flying all the way. He sent me back again, saying he'd be there as soon as I--and that Nettie Trewin must be a born simpleton.

"Master Johnny!--Mr. Ludlow!--Is it you?"

The words greeted me in a weak panting voice, just as I reached the corner by the store barn, and I recognized Mrs. Trewin. Alarmed at Nettie's prolonged stay, she had come out, all bruised as she was, and extorted the fact--that the child was missing--from Maria Lease. I told her that the child was found--and where.

"Dead or alive, sir?"

I stammered in my answer. Cole would be up directly, I said, and we must hope for the best. But she drew a worse conclusion.

"It was all I had," she murmured. "My one little ewe lamb."

"Don't cry, Mrs. Trewin. It may turn out to be all right, you know."

"If I could only have laid her poor little face on my bosom to die, and said good-bye to her!" she wailed, the tears falling. "I have had so much trouble in the world, Master Johnny!--and she was all of comfort left to me in it."