"Jus' lied down an' hid," he repeated.
"No, no!" says I. "She'd never weakly hide her head from this."
He eyed me.
"Not Judith!" I expostulated.
"She'd never bear her mother's shame, Dannie," says he. "She'd run
away an' hide. She--she--_told_ me so."
I observed my uncle: he was gone with the need of rum--exhausted and
unnerved: his face all pallid and splotched. 'Twas a ghastly thing to
watch him stump the gravelled walk of our garden in the gray light of
that day.
"Uncle Nicholas, sir," says I, for the moment forgetting the woe of
Judith's hapless state in this new alarm, "do you come within an' have
a dram."
"Ye're not knowin' _how_ t' search," he complained. "Ye're but a pack
o' dunderheads!"
"Come, sir!" I pleaded.
"Is ye been t' Skeleton Droch?" he demanded. "She've a habit o'
readin' there. No!" he growled, in a temper; "you isn't had the
_sense_ t' go t' Skeleton Droch."
"A dram, sir," I ventured, "t' comfort you."
"An' ye bide here, ye dunderhead!" he accused.
I put my hand on his shoulder: he flung it off. I took his arm: he
wrenched himself free in an indignant passion.
"Ye're needin' it, sir," says I.
"For God's sake, child!" he cried; "do you go find the maid an' leave
me be. God knows I've trouble enough without ye!"
The maid was not at Skeleton Droch: neither on the hills, nor in the
hiding-places of the valleys, nor lying broken on the ledges of the
cliffs, nor swinging in the sea beneath--nor was she anywhere on the
land of Twin Islands or in the waters that restlessly washed the
boundary of gray rock. 'Twas near evening now, and a dreary, angrily
windy time. Our men gathered from shore and inland barren--and there
was no Judith, nor cold, wet body of Judith, anywhere to be found.
'Twas unthinkingly whispered, then, that the maid had fled with John
Cather on the mail-boat: this on Tom Tulk's Head, in its beginning,
and swiftly passed from tongue to tongue. Being overwrought when I
caught the surmise--'twas lusty young Jack Bluff that uttered it
before me--I persuaded the youth of his error, which, upon rising, he
admitted, as did they all of that group, upon my request, forgiving
me, too, I think, the cruel abruptness of my argument, being men of
feeling, every one. The maid was not gone with John Cather, she was
not on the hills of Twin Islands; she was then fled to Topmast Harbor
for self-support, that larger settlement, whence many Labradormen put
out at this season for the northerly fishing. And while, sheltered
from the rising wind, the kind men-folk of our harbor talked with my
uncle and me on Eli Flack's stage, there came into the tickle from
Topmast Harbor, in quest of water, a punt and a man, being bound, I
think, for Jimmie Tick's Cove. 'Twas by him reported that a maid of
gentle breeding had come alone in a punt to Topmast in the night. And
her hair? says I. She had hair, and a wonderful sight of it, says he.
And big, blue eyes? says I. She _had_ eyes, says he; an' she had a
nose, so far as he could tell, which had clapped eyes on the maid, an'
she had teeth an' feet, himself being able to vouch for the feet,
which clipped it over the Topmast roads quite lively, soon after dawn,
in search of a schooner bound down the Labrador.
I knew then into what service the _Shining Light_ should be
commissioned.
"Ay, lad," says my uncle.
"And will you ship, sir?"
"Why, Lord love us, shipmate!" he roared, indignantly, to the
amazement of our folk; "is ye thinkin' I'm past my labor?"