He knew that she had slept in the hammock, for he had sent his colleagues away, and taking another way about to overtake her, had seen her enter the gate, and watched her through the night until she stole away in the gray of the morning. So far he knew her way and could follow the trail. But when he reached the streets of the little town beyond and must choose between houses and turning corners it was not so plain. Yet he had resolved to leave no clue unfollowed, no spot where she might have turned unsearched. He had a plan to make his search complete. He would make a map of each day’s wanderings, note each house and corner and way of egress, choose the most likely and search it to the end, then come back and choose the next. It seemed, perhaps, the work of a lifetime, yet he did not feel that he would be long in finding her. There was something in his soul that told him he would find her. He had to find her and tell her what he had been doing, and that he never would do it again. He had to absolve his soul from that before her eyes. He could not lift up his head and respect himself again unless he did. She had stood like a young saint within the shrine of his heart, and now he felt cast away from the presence of all that he held really holy in the world. So he went step by step over the way that Joyce had gone, his clever judgment quickly deciding which corner she would have chosen, where she would have paused, and how gone on again. And Joyce would have been surprised to know how far he traced her very steps. It was not until he reached the city that his way became bewildering. He had dropped into a number of homes on his way where people lived who often visited in Meadow Brook, and casually, as if he had had an accident on the road and needed to borrow water or a tool for his car, which he had left out of sight down the road, he would put one or two keen questions that would make him sure she had not passed that way while these people were about. And so his little note book became filled with tiny tracings of maps, with streets and corners noted, and each turning that he had not followed marked for returning some day in case his quest was not successful.