Chapter IV: The Search

"Take we heed to all our foot-prints;
Tell-tales are they, where we go.
Let them bear no evil witness
On the sand, or on the snow;
On the mould, or on the clay,
Or life's dusty, thronged highway."

THE family at The Yews are sleeping rather longer than usual on the morning at which we are now arrived. Sleep had been a late guest at the pillows of several of the household, for anxious thoughts had kept the earlier watches of the night with them, "holding their eyes waking." At last Mat was up, and out with Geordie and the farm lads, looking after the sheep. Laddie was at hand in readiness to help; but Chance failed to obey the whistle which generally brought him in a moment, eager for his work.

"What's to do with the old dog, that he doesn't come at call?" said Geordie Garthwaite; "I heard both the dogs barking terribly fierce in the night; but Chance is no where this morning. Is the young master at home, I wonder?"

"Yes," said Mat, "so far as I know. He was in last night. But he's lying late this morning;" and away they went to dig out some of their sheep, which had been buried in the drifts of the night.

"Miles dear," shouted Alice at her brother's door—"Miles, come to breakfast."

No answer.

She opened the door and he was not there. There was the bed just as her own careful hands had left the sheet neatly turned down, and the pillow round and smooth. The casement was not quite closed, and there was a little bank of snow lying on the windowsill.

A single glance showed her all this, and she rushed down to the kitchen in consternation "Oh, Mark! he isn't there; and his bed is all untouched. He must have gone out—and oh I think of the snow."

"Gone?" exclaimed Mark, with terror in his face, "and such a night!"

He ran up stairs to Miles's room to try to collect evidences of what had occurred; but he could gain nothing here. Then the place where hung the hats and plaids was examined; and Miles's hat and plaid were gone; his boots were gone too, and his mountain staff.

"He has taken his 'comforter,'" sobbed Alice, "mine that he liked so much; and the gloves that I knitted."

"Has he?" said Mark, with a brightening face, "then he wasn't desperate; he wouldn't have done things so orderly, unless he were cool and clear. There is hope in that, dear Alice;" and he took her hand tenderly. "I will go and seek him; and thou must trust me, as thou would'st a brother."

"I will," was her firm reply; but when she saw him silently making ready to set forth, her heart misgave her; and going up to him, she said pleadingly, "Will you not tell me where you are going, and what you will do?"

"Going to call Geordie and the lads, and then search the road to the Old Man."

Alice shuddered; and quietly laying her cold hand on his arm, said, "Mark, you must let me go with you. I cannot stay behind."

"And leave the mother in her desolation, Alice? Besides," he added in a low voice, as he rushed out through the porch, "how could I bear to risk my all?"

Poor Alice! She knew only too well how great was her stake, too. But every wandering thought was called home to assist in the dreaded duty of breaking Miles' mysterious disappearance to the widowed mother.

There was no wringing of hands, no tearing of hair, no wild burst of passionate grief; but there was a look of inexpressible anguish which seemed to make her ten years older at one stroke; and there were just these few words, "I had best be alone, Alice, dear; but bring me my book; for I am thinking I shall want every promise I can find, and every prayer I can pray."

Alice silently crossed the door, and left her to the prayer of faith.

In the meantime, Mark was far on his way to the Green Gap, striding onward in eager haste, and Geordie and the lads plodded after, looking anxiously for tracks as they went. But some fresh snow had fallen in the early morning, obliterating the footmarks which had been left, first by Tim o' the Brooms, and then by Miles and his mute companion.

"I see nothing but smooth snows," shouted Mark to the group behind him.

"Well, Master Wilson, I seem to see sores in the snow, which have healed over, like. They'll serve for the length of a man's stride well enough, too. Look ye here."

And here and there slight signs of disturbance were just visible, though only the eye of a shepherd, who had often tracked his lost sheep in the fields and fells of snow, could have detected them.

Now they have reached the Gap, and they look with inward misgivings at the snowy battlements by which it was defended—rampart, curtain, and fosse. However, borne by their strong limbs and helped by their strong staves, and impelled by their strong motive, the bold young men and the brave old man forced their way through.

On the further side of the barrier there were two mountain roads branching off from that which they had been following, the one leading up the gorge to Scarf Beck Farm, the other winding up the side of the Old Man. The party stop to consider. Mark Wilson thinks he has grounds for the belief that his friend would take the way of the mountain; but as his suspicions are vague, founded only upon the hints and half-revealings of the previous day, which he had painfully put together, he could give his companions no reason for the course which he intended to pursue.

"Seems to me," said Geordie Garthwaite, "that young master is kind, like, to Scarf Beck Bella—and so, like enough, he's gone there. That's an old man's mind upon it."

"No," said Mark, "I must search the mountain's side before I go home."

"Then it's my belief," replied Geordie, "that we shall never get home at all, if we do the like of that. There's snow enough in places to bury us all, like sheep. But, stay! What's this, again?"

And sure enough there were undeniable footmarks plodding up the path which led to the old workings of a deserted mine, high up on the mountainside.

Geordie stooped down and examined. "It's a man's foot, however, turning up here; and the prints are part filled again with new snow, looser and softer than the old. So it's done since evening, when there was the great fall. We'll try the mountain, master."

But those tracks, all the while, were but the tracks of Tim o' the Brooms.

Poor Chance! Thou dost not know how near is help, and how it is already turning away and leaving thee in thy distress. And yet thy poor unenlightened instinct is doing wonders of self-sacrificing devotion, and of beautiful, tender skill. Thou halt dug away the snow which had closed over thy unconscious master; thou hast licked his pale forehead; licked his livid face over and over again; licked his stiffening wrists: takes his hand in thy mouth in thy agonized efforts to rouse him from his strange, cold sleep; and then, lying down close to his side, thou hast moaned and whined to the winds. If there be a heart yet beating feebly within that rigid form, it is because thy anxious efforts have not suffered the last faint glow of animal heat to die out.

The little band of searchers is now working its way wearily up the steep. It was well that the old shepherd knew the path in past times, or they would have been inevitably lost. They are too much engrossed, by their life and death engagement, to see how glorious in its wintry majesty is the scene above, beneath, and around; the shining crest of the mountain, each broad white shoulder, and every descending line, sharply cut against the dark blue sky; the lake beneath as blue as the deep sapphire above, each headland projected in silvery curves into the lake, pencilled with the feathery outlines of snow-laden branches, or heavily fringed and embroidered with the dull dark green of the pines. The crags, where they were too precipitous to afford a resting-place to the snows, on ledge or in hollow, looked out stern and bald from the prevailing drapery; and here and there a fleecy cloud had floated down to hold some mysterious parley with a mountain-top, for the time confounding all distinction between earth and sky.

"What can that little line of thread be, up there in the hollow of the crag?" asked Mark Wilson. "It cannot be a shred of mist, can it? It looks strangely like smoke." They all looked up; and there was, sure enough, a slender line of blue smoke curling upward from a dark crevice of the rock.

"Smoke, heather smoke, and none other, unless I am blinded with the snow," was Geordie's reply. "It's uncommon strange, that. Come, my lads, we will find out who has lighted a heather fire up on the heights like that, and what for it is."

Mark made no reply, but strode and clambered on. He had his own painful theory whereby to account for the phenomenon. They were now at the foot of the crag, when first one man's head, and then another, was seen peering down over the rocks. The heads instantly disappeared again; and presently, after, the curling line of blue smoke disappeared also; but the old shepherd's practised eye had already carefully taken its bearings and noted its way-marks.

"Up this way, lads; we will soon see what sort of bird has been building its nest in such a queer hole as that."

"It is the nest of foul birds of prey, and we must net them, if we can," remarked the schoolmaster, gloomily.

"Ay, ay, net them, master; and carry off the nest egg," said the shepherd with a knowing smile.

"Have they got guns up there, I wonder?" said one of the farm lads, in a hesitating voice. "I can't say as though I much like the sport."

"Come on," cried the schoolmaster, "we are doing our duty, and that is enough for brave Englishmen."

Scarcely had he spoken when a bullet whistled sharply past his head, and splintered a projecting point of rock close behind him.

"Now, then, I am strong to do my duty," said Mark, "for they are murderers in their hearts, though God has spared me."

Another bullet whizzed by.

"This will not do at all," said old Geordie, quietly; "now, then, my lads, make a rush for your dear lives."

The old man planted his iron-shod shepherd's staff on the rock, and sprang up with the agility of a native-born cragsman; for he had robbed many a raven's nest, and eagle's eyrie, in his distant youth, and had won the shepherd's prize for the feat. At this instant, a man rushed down the craggy path and sprang away like a goat from rock to rock.

"There goes Miner Jack," cried one of the lads.

But another figure which had been stealing round a buttress of the mountain fortress, suddenly leaped out upon Mark Wilson with a yell of hatred, and grappling with him, rolled heavily down the steep.

"Save the master, save him," shouted old Geordie from above.

The young men rushed down after the yet rolling figures, and contrived to stop them in their headlong course. It was but just in time; a yard or two more and they would have bounded together down a precipice which was masked by snow, and been dashed in pieces at the foot. Tim o' the Brooms instantly shook himself free from the lads, writhing from their grasp like a slippery serpent, as he was, glided rapidly down the path, and disappeared.

"Now for the hawk's nest, without the old birds," said Geordie.

They climbed to the entrance of an old working of the deserted mine—an "adit," the Cornish miners would have called it—and looking in, they were half-stifled by the smoke of an expiring heather fire, and by the stupefying fumes of distilling whiskey.

Mark's eye eagerly searched the cave for an expected object, but that object, to his inexpressible relief, he found not.

"Thank heaven he isn't here," whispered he. "Thank God for our preservation," he solemnly added, aloud: and the three men stood in deep silence, the two young men and the old, while the schoolmaster offered up a brief thanksgiving in that strange oratory.

Then came the difficult consideration of what must be done under such novel circumstances. Here was a perfect little distillery in full working; the whole plant, as it is termed, of an illicit still, in complete order. Here was a large heap of dried heather stored up for fuel; for it is the heather smoke which imparts that peculiar mountain flavor which distinguished the illicit whiskey from the lawfully manufactured but ever dangerous and treacherous liquor. And there, in the deep chamber of the adit, was a long array of stone jars, many of them evidently full and others empty; while just at the mouth of the cave was a lot of heavy jars, arranged as if in readiness for removal.

"I take possession in the king's name," said Mark, with serious dignity. "This discovery must be notified immediately to Mr. Knibb; and then we wash our hands of the affair. But recollect, my friends, we have not yet found Miles Lawson. Everything must be sacrificed to the search for him. All this, while he may be perishing in the snow."

"Ay, ay, the young master first of all, and then the spoil," replied Geordie Garthwaite.

"We had best have a dram to drive the cold out of us, in course," suggested one of the farm lads.

"And just to see if it is worth anything," added the other.

"Not a drop shall be touched," said Mark, firmly; "I wish I dare pour it all out on the heather; but it is not ours end I cannot do as I would. Now for the young master, without a moment's waste of time."

"What if the Miner and Broom Tim should come back and take all the stock away?" reasoned one of the young men, as they descended.

"They will not do that," said old Geordie. "They saw we knew them, and they are far enough off by this time. Besides, they'd never think we should be such silly folks as to leave the prey." Then, coming close to Mark, he said in a low voice, "What is't has brought you a'top here, Master Wilson, to seek for young master in such a rabbit-hole like?"

"I had rather not tell even such an old friend of the Lawsons as you are, Geordie; only I am humbly thankful that we have not found him there."

"Well, well, you needn't say it; for I have had my heavy doubts about what was a'foot for a good bit o'time. But 'twasn't for an old friend of the lad's, his father's servant and his grandfather's before him, to say aught against the good name of the family. But I have been sore sorry for the mistress when the poor lad has been out o'nights, and slighting the land by day. I've done my best to keep things together, and taken more upon me than I should, like enough. But it is an evil case when the master takes to bad ways."

"What is your advice now Geordie?" asked the schoolmaster. "For I am quite at sea again."

"I thought so. Well, it's my counsel that we go home round by way of Scarf Beck, and see if they know aught about him, there."

"That is it," said Mark, with a gleam of revived hope; "round by way of Scarf Beck, lads, as fast as legs can carry us. My watch to whoever finds him first."