The aunt had been thinking all day of Rico's words, "I will take myself out of your way," and trying to justify her own position. Now the grandmother's rebuke made her ashamed. "I will go back," she said, as she stepped out into the dark field. "Rico may have come home while I have been standing here." In her heart she knew that she would be glad to find this true, but the little house was empty and still. Early the next morning the neighbors set forth to search carefully in the ravines and along the approaches to the glacier. When Stineli's father noticed that she had followed the others he said, "That is right, Stineli; you can get into places where bigger folk could not go." "But, father," said Stineli, "if Rico went up the road he couldn't have fallen into any such place, could he?" "Of course he could!" said the father. "He was such a dreamer that it would have been easy enough for him to lose his way. He probably paid no attention to where he was going, and wandered off toward the mountains." A great fear entered Stineli's heart when she heard this. For days she could scarcely eat or sleep and she went listlessly about her work as if she did not know what she was doing. No one could be found who had seen Rico since the night he left home. As time went on he was given up for dead. The neighbors tried to console one another by saying: "He is better off as it is. The child had no one to look after him properly." CHAPTER X A LITTLE LIGHT Stineli became more and more depressed as the days passed. The children complained, "Stineli won't tell us any more stories and she won't laugh with us any more." One day the mother spoke to the father about the change in Stineli, but all that he said was: "It is because she is growing so rapidly. Let her rest a little and give her plenty of goat's milk to drink." After about three weeks had passed in this way, the grandmother went with Stineli to her room one evening and said, "I can understand, dear, how hard you find it to forget about Rico, but I am afraid that you are not resigning yourself to the inevitable as it should be your duty to do for the sake of the dear ones about you." "But, grandmother," sobbed Stineli, "you don't know how it hurts me to think that I gave Rico the notion of going to the lake; and now that he has been killed, I am to blame for it." A great load seemed to fall from the grandmother as she heard these words. She had given Rico up for lost, for she could not otherwise account for his complete disappearance. A strong hope of his safety now came to her. "Tell me, child," she said, "all that you know about his going to the lake." Stineli told of Rico's longing to see the pretty lake he remembered, and how she had advised him to make the trip. "I am sure," she said, "that Rico started for the lake, but father says that he would get killed anyway."