It was noon when she came out at the edge of the fields. She sat down under the fence to rest, and, from a sense of duty, to eat something. Afterwards she struck clear across the rough, neglected, cleared land to the woods on the other side, then back again, shaping a course that took her through every hollow. Her experience with sheep had taught her the exact lay of the peninsula, how each depression gradually deepened into a gully, running off to some branch on one side or the other. But nowhere did she find what she was looking for. She spent several hours searching the banks of the little stream that meandered through the woods to the east of the fields. That was where she had sent him to make his camp that night. She found the site of his camp, but no evidences that he had revisited it. There were plenty of tracks in the mud of the stream, for the searchers had passed and re-passed this way, but no voice answered her soft calls. Finally she struck across the corner of the farthest field, making for the path which went down through the woods to the arm of Back creek, that path they had followed on another night, a night of happiness. She thought of the old skiff drawn up on top of the bank, and had a wild hope that he might have launched it and succeeded in making his way down the arm and across the main creek to the mainland. True, the skiff was leaky and rotten, but a desperate man might make it serve for a short voyage. She ran the last part of the way. The skiff was there, just as before! She dropped down upon it, weary of body and despairing of heart, and burst into tears. "Don! Don! Don!" she called for the last time. A green heron mocked her with its discordant croak. The sun was low, and there could be no further searching that day. Pen made her heavy way back through the woods, and across the wide field. As she walked a merciful apathy descended on her. She could suffer no more. Imaginary pictures of Don starving in the woods no longer rose before her mind's eye. She was conscious only of a ghastly vacuum inside her. Within it a little thought stirred like a snake: "This can't go on! If I don't hear in two or three days more..." She never completed the thought, but her soul was aware of her intention. As she was letting down the bars that admitted her to the road, a squad of men straggled by, searchers homeward bound. Pen hung back to let them pass. The business was in the nature of a lark to them; young men relieved for the time being from the tedium of their usual lives, they were talking loud, laughing, jostling each other in the road. They stared at Pen as unabashed as animals, and Pen busied herself with the bars. Nevertheless she was aware that one of them did not stare at her. She looked at him, and was struck first, by his curiously self-conscious air. She looked afresh, rubbed her eyes so to speak, and her heart stood still. It was Don.