He searched the grounds and garden carefully, going over every possible hiding-place twice. As he did so, he reflected that she could not have known where to go to hide, and he felt sure he would find her in a minute or two. The minutes grew into thirty, and he had found no trace of her. He went down the street quite a distance in one direction, only to be sure she would have chosen the other, and to hurry back. An hour passed with no trace of her, and then he began systematically to go over the grounds again, calling her name softly; but a screech owl mocked him, and the night wind only echoed back his voice emptily. Once he drew near the house and under the balcony where Dawn had escaped. He heard his sister calling him, "Charles, Charles! Mother wants you!" and his heart grew bitter. Then Betty’s head came out of the window, and she called again: "Charles, where are you and Dawn? Mother has been moaning and crying for half an hour. She wants you, and nothing else will stop her but the sight of you." Then, out of the darkness, Charles answered his sister, and the tone of his voice frightened her: "Betty, I cannot come. There is something more important than even Mother just now. I’m sorry for Mother, but I’m afraid it’s all her fault. She has been saying things to Dawn, and Dawn has gone!" "Gone!" Betty’s horrified voice seemed like a fresh recognition of the awful truth that his young wife was beyond his easy reach, and a dreadful foreboding entered his soul. "Oh, Charles!" Betty gasped. "But she can’t be gone. Her things are here, aren’t they? Wait—I’ll look." Betty disappeared, and in a moment more her white, scared face reappeared on the balcony, and she was holding a candle high above her head. "No, they are not there. I’ve even looked in the closet, thinking she might have hung them up. Her bonnet and mantle were on the bed before supper, but they are gone from the room. I found her gloves, though—one on the bed, and one on the floor. Here they are." She tossed them to him as if they were an important clue, and Charles caught at them as if they were something most precious. "What shall we do?" she asked. "Hadn’t I better call Father? We ought to find her at once, poor little thing! She’ll be frightened out in the night all alone. How could Mother! But then she was so upset with Harrington, I don’t believe she understood things fully, do you?" But Charles had no time to listen to Betty’s sympathetic chatter. His heart was wrung with the thought of the girl he loved out in the night alone, afraid perhaps of the unknown perils about her. He must hurry to her aid. "Yes, tell Father to come to the front door, quick! There’s no time to lose. And, Betty, don’t rouse the neighbors. Let’s keep this quiet."