There was no time to be wasted in lamentations. Jim called to his man. A lantern was lighted, and the two with sticks went forth again into the storm. Meantime the darkness had become complete. The wind raged, the snow fell in huge flakes against the windows like dabs of plaster. It covered roof, ground, walls. Mrs. Thacker was left alone in the house with a maid only. Her agitation, her alarm, were great. She loved her child passionately. How could a child struggle through such a storm and beat a way through the snow? Every road was deep buried, the landmarks obscured. The child would stray on the Downs, perhaps sink with weariness, and sleep the fatal sleep of death; perhaps in its wanderings come, blinded with snow, to the edge of a chalk quarry, fall over, and be dashed to pieces. The night wore on. The father, with his man, had gone over the ground again between the farmhouse where lived the mother of his wife and his own mill, but had discovered no traces of his little one. He called up men from a cottage or two that he passed. He got help from the farm to which the child had gone. As the hours passed he became more hopeless. He expected one thing only—to find his child’s body, for he deemed it impossible for her to be alive under the circumstances. If she had strayed on the Wold, there was no house on the Downs into which she could have been received. The condition of mind of Mrs. Thacker was worse than that of her husband. He was battling with the storm, searching; she was condemned to inactivity, could only bow and pray, have hot water ready, bricks heated, in the event of her child’s return, to bathe her, to place against her body to restore heat. Once she was frightened. She heard a crash against the front door, a blow that near beat it in, and then all was still. What was it? Dare she open? Then she supposed there had been a fall of a mass of snow from the roof, and that this had produced the sound. Ten minutes later she heard voices—her husband and the men returning—and she ran to the door to throw it open, and ask news. As she did so, something—a great heap of snow, but something tender, something on which the snow had heaped itself, fell inwards. A cry! Mrs. Thacker stooped, Jim ran up with the lantern. It was Crazy Jane, with the child in her arms. The child asleep, and Jane—dead. How and where the silly girl had found Mabel was never known. All the child could remember was, that Jane had discovered her as she rambled about in the snow, and that Jane had carried her till she fell asleep. How far Jane had wandered, how far borne the heavy burden, could not be told, but it must have been far, for she had died of over-exhaustion at the very moment when she had reached the door of the house, the outside of which she had watched for many years, the inside of which she had not been allowed for long to enter.