“Very natural, ma’am,” said the big superintendent comfortingly, and went with them to the wood. It was rather thrilling to go with him and watch him. Joyce and mother had to show him the place from which Joan had started and the spot at which she had disappeared. He looked at them hard, frowning a little and nodding to himself, and went stalking mightily among the ferns. “It was _’ere_ she went?” he inquired, as he reached the dark path, and being assured that it was, he thrust in and commenced his search. The pond seemed to give him ideas, which old Jenks disposed of, and he marched on till he came out to the edge of the fields, where the hay was yet uncut. Joan could not have crossed them without leaving a track in the tall grass as clear as a cart-rut. “We ’ave to consider the possibilities of the matter,” said the superintendent. “Assumin’ that the wood ’as been thoroughly searched, where did she get out of it?” “Searched!” growled old Jenks. “There ain’t a inch as I ’aven’t searched an’ seen—not a inch.” “The kidnappin’ the’ry,” went on the superintendent, ignoring him and turning to mother, “I don’t incline to. ’Owever, we must go to work in order, an’ I’ll ’ave my men up ’ere and make sure of the wood. All gypsies an’ tramps will be stopped and interrogated. I don’t think there’s no cause for you to feel anxious, ma’am. I ’ope to ’ave some news for you in the course of the afternoon.” They watched him free-wheel down the lane and shoot round the corner. “Oh, dear,” said mother then; “why doesn’t the baby come? I wish daddy weren’t away.” Now that the police had entered the affair, Joyce felt that there remained nothing to be done. Uniformed authority was in charge of events; it could not fail to find Joan. She had a vision of the police at work, stopping straggling families of tramps on distant by-roads, looking into the contents of their dreadful bundles, flashing the official bull’s-eye lantern into the mysterious interior of gypsy caravans, and making ragged men and slatternly women give an account of their wanderings. No limits to which they would not go; how could they fail? She wished their success seemed as inevitable to her mother as it did to her. “They’re sure to bring her back, mother,” she repeated. “Oh, chick,” said mother, “I keep telling myself so. But I wish—I wish——” “What, mother?” “I wish,” said mother, in a sudden burst of speech, as if she were confessing something that troubled her—“I wish you hadn’t seen that wood-lady.”