It was done; and this was the occasion of the assembling at the landing of the mingled and anxious group which we began to describe near the commencement of this chapter, and to which we will now return. Foremost in the mingled group of people which we have thus brought to view, was the agonized wife and mother of the missing or lost men; whose doubtful fate was also engrossing, though less intensely, every thought and feeling of the sympathizing company around her. She had gradually worked herself down to the extremest verge of the low shore, and had unconsciously placed one foot in the edge of the water, as if irresistibly drawn to the farthest possible limit in the supposed direction of those two objects of her affection, who, alive or dead, were still her all-in-all of this world; and there she stood, slightly inclined forward, but motionless, mute, and pale as a marble statue, with lips painfully compressed, and eyes, glazed and watery, intently fixed on the opposite shore of the lake to which she was looking for relief, at least from the terrible suspense under which she was suffering. By her side, a little back, stood the wife of the hunter, and two or three other women of the vicinity, who had more particularly interested themselves in her troubles,--some shedding sympathetic tears, and some offering an occasional word, which they hoped might in a slight degree divert her sorrows or console her in her anguish. But, alike regardless of their falling tears and soothing remarks, she gazed on, in unbroken silence, hour after hour, taking no note of time, or any object around her, in the all-absorbing intensity of her feelings. Little, indeed, was said by _any_ of the company. The younger portion stood in hushed awe at the sight of grief in the older, and at the thought of what might the next hour befall. And the men, though visibly exercised by strong emotions, and occasionally revealing a trembling lip or starting tear, as they glanced at the face of the chief sufferer, yet offered scarce a remark to relieve the pervading gloom of the sad and anxious hour. The whole group, indeed, might have been taken for a funeral cortége, awaiting on the shore the expected remains of some deceased friend.