He ran off, and presently his voice was joined to Jenks’s, calling Joan—calling, calling, and getting no answer. Mother took Joyce’s hand again. “Come,” she said. “We’ll walk round by the path, and you must tell me again how it all happened. Did you really see something when Joan told you to look?” “I expect I didn’t,” replied Joyce dolefully. “But Joan’s always saying there’s a fairy or something in the shadows and I always think I see them for a moment.” “It couldn’t have been a live woman—or a man—that you saw?” “Oh, no!” Joyce was positive of that. Mother’s hand tightened on hers understandingly and they went on in silence till they met Jenks. Jenks was an oldish man with bushy gray whiskers, who never wore a coat, and now he was wet to the loins with mud and water. “That there ol’ pond,” he explained. “I’ve been an’ took a look at her. Tromped through her proper, I did, an’ I’ll go bail there ain’t so much as a dead cat in all the mud of her. Thish yer’s a mistry, mum, an’ no mistake.” Mother stared at him. “I can’t bear this,” she said suddenly. “You must go on searching, Jenks, and Walter must go on his bicycle to the police-station at once. Call him, please!” “Walter!” roared Jenks obediently. “Coming!” answered the boot-boy and burst forth from the bushes. In swift, clear words, which no stupidity could mistake or forget, mother gave him his orders, spoken in a tone that meant urgency. Walter went flying to execute them. “Oh, mother, where do you think Joan can be?” begged Joyce when Jenks had gone off to resume his search. “I don’t know,” said mother. “It’s all so absurd.” “If there _was_ wood-ladies, they wouldn’t hurt a baby like Joan,” suggested Joyce. “Oh, who could hurt her!” cried mother, and fell to calling again. Her voice, of which each accent was music, alternated with the harsh roars of Jenks. Walter on his bicycle must have hurried, in spite of his permanently punctured front tire, for it was a very short time before bells rang in the steep lane from the road and Superintendent Farrow himself wheeled his machine in at the gate, massive and self-possessed, a blue-clad minister of comfort. He heard mother’s tale, which embodied that of Joyce, with a half-smile lurking in his mustache and his big chin creased back against his collar. Then he nodded, exactly as if he saw through the whole business and could find Joan in a minute or two, and propped his bicycle against the fence. “I understand then,” he said, “that the little girl’s been missing for rather more than an hour. In that case, she can’t have got far. I sent a couple o’ constables round the roads be’ind the wood before I started, an’ now I’ll just ’ave a look through the wood myself.” “Thank you,” said mother. “I don’t know why I’m so nervous, but——”