We had not gone far along the Cocalico, when suddenly the grassy bank spread out into a stony, gravelly beach, where the deep pool we had been following dwindled away to a shallow, rippling stream. On this hard beach I at once lost the footprints, but Sonnlein never hesitating led the way, still silent and grim, to the water's edge, and there again I plainly saw the foot-marks in the soft mud among the stones. He paused but a moment as he looked at the marks, and then plunged into the stream without waiting to see whether or how I might follow. My selfish indignation at his indifference to me lasted but the space of a lightning's flash, for I immediately thought of the great trouble that had come to my boy, and without any ado I plunged into the icy waters that, despite its shallowness, caught me knee-deep at times, and with such savage eagerness as I feared more than once would sweep my feet off the slippery bed of the stream and no doubt drown me, for in my neglect of earthly things I had never learned to swim. But with all my floundering and splashing I did at last reach the farther side, where I found Sonnlein following the shore looking closely for the footprints, of which I could see none. But suddenly we found them again quite a distance below where we had emerged from the Cocalico, and I realized now that the captors had practised the old trick of walking in the water some distance to destroy all pursuit. But now Sonnlein's fagot was almost burnt out and the rain was beginning to fall, lightly as yet, though I knew it would soon be drenching us to the skin, and by washing away the footprints make it impossible to follow any further. I tried to call Sonnlein's mind to the utter folly of hoping to accomplish aught in the darkness and the rain, but his only reply was to make a fresh torch from the dead branches of an old tree overhanging the creek. Lighting the sticks from his fast expiring fagot, he suddenly turned to me, as if for the first time since we had left the chestnut tree he were aware of me, and said shortly, "Stay thou here till I come back," and with that he plunged into the heavy brush, mine eyes following anxiously as far as I could the light of his torch. It was not long until, with all the straining of my sight, I no more could see aught of his light, and then heavy-hearted--as I had not been for many a year--and wet and shivering from the cold rain that was beating down faster and faster, I crouched up close to the dry side of the old dead tree, and patiently awaited in all the misery of my body and mind the return of my boy. Not that I feared he could not take care of himself, for I knew he had the strength of a lion and the quickness of a cat, but I knew his determined, persistent nature, and that he would go to the ends of the earth, if needs be, for her he loved.