"Oh, yer ain't a goin' to give up, doctor, be yer?" cried Caesar. "Oh, don't never give up. She must be here somewheres. Bodies floats allers in fresh water: she'll come to shore before long. Oh, don't give up! I'll set here an' watch, an' you go home an' git somethin' to eat. You looks dreadful." "No, no, Caesar," the doctor replied, with the first tears he had felt yet welling up in his eyes, "you must come home with me. There is no hope of finding her." Caesar did not move, but fixed a sullen gaze on the water. The doctor spoke again, more firmly: "You must come, Caesar. Your mistress would tell you so herself." At this Caesar rose, docile, and the two went home in silence through the hemlock woods. For three days the search for Hetty continued. It was suggested that possibly she might have gone over to the Springton shore for some purpose, and there have met with some accident or assault. This suggestion opened up new vistas of conjecture, almost more terrible than the certainty of her death would have been. Parties of three and four scoured the woods in all directions. Again and again Dr. Eben passed over the spot where she had lain crouched so long: the bushes which had been brushed back as she passed, bent back again to let him go over her very footsteps; but nothing could speak to betray her secret. Nature seems most mute when we most need her help: she keeps, through all our distresses, a sort of dumb and faithful neutrality, which is not, perhaps, so devoid of sympathy as it appears. After the third day was over, it was accepted by tacit consent that farther search would be useless. Hetty was mourned as dead: in every home her name was tenderly and sorrowingly spoken; old memories of her gay and mirthful youth, of her cheery and busy womanhood, were revived and dwelt upon. But in her own home was silence that could be felt. The grief there was grief that could not speak. Only little Raby, of all the household, found words to use; and his childish and inconsolable laments made the speechless anguish around him all the greater. To Dr. Eben, the very sight of the child was a bitter and unreasonable pain. Except for Raby, he thought, Hetty would still be alive. He had never approved of her taking him on the water; had remonstrated with her in the beginning, but had been overruled by her impetuous confidence in her own strength and skill. Now, as often as he saw the poor little fellow's woe-begone face, he had a strange mixture of pity and hatred towards him. In vain he reasoned against it. "He has lost his best friend, as well as I," he said to himself; "I ought to try to comfort him." But it was impossible: the child's presence grew more and more irksome to him, until, at last, he said to Sally, one day: "Sally, you and Raby are both looking very ill. I want you to go away for a time. How would you like to go to 'The Runs,' for a month?"