With the other things, Edward placed in his hands a long wax taper, made for the sugar camp, lighted, and with a kiss to his mother, and a cheery good-night to the boys, he sprang out. As Julia did not return at dark, her father and mother supposed she had stopped with Nell Roberts. Mrs. Markham remembered the adventure which signalized her last walk from Coe's, and was anxious; and the Judge went down to Roberts's for her. Nell had been home one hour, and said Orville had gone home with Julia. A messenger was hurried off to Coe's, and word was sent through the neighborhood, to call out the men and boys. It had been years since an alarm and a hunt for the lost had occurred. The messenger returned with young Coe, who said that he went with Miss Markham to within sight of her father's fields, when she insisted that he should return, and he did. Cool and collected, the Judge and his party, with lanterns and torches, accompanied by Coe, proceeded to the point where he parted with Julia, when it was discovered that what she had mistaken for her father's fields, was a new opening in the woods, a considerable distance back from them. It was supposed that in endeavoring to find a passage through, or around the fallen timber, she had lost her way. Obviously, if she went back towards the old road, which was a broad opening through the woods, she would in no event cross it, and must be somewhere within the forest, east of it, and between the State road and the one which led from it to Coe's. Through these woods, with flashing torch and gleaming lantern, with shout and loud halloa, the Judge and his now numerous party swept. As often as a dry tree or combustible matter was found, it was set on fire, there being no danger of burning over the forest, wet with the rains of Spring. This forest covered hundreds of acres, traversed by streams and gullies, and rocky precipices, rendered difficult of passage by fallen trees, thickets, twining vines and briers. The weather had been intensely hot for the season, ominously so, for the last two days, and on this day, the sun, after hanging like a fiery ball in the thickening heavens, disappeared at mid-afternoon, in the dark mass of vapor that gathered in the lower atmosphere. The night came on early, with a black darkness, and while there was no wind, there was a low, humming moan in the air, as if to warn of coming tempest, and the atmosphere was already chill with the approaching change. CHAPTER XXVII. THE BABES IN THE WOODS.