The cow had evidently strayed far. June’s search led her to the spots which Bloss was known to frequent, but she could find no trace of her. Sometimes the girl’s voice, broken and hoarse with weeping, rose on the rich stillness of the hour, calling to the truant. She became irritable, exasperated against the animal, who, on such a night as this, while her heart was bursting with sorrow, ended the bitterness of the day with so wearisome a hunt. Finally, exhausted by long hours of watching and the fatigue of grief, she burst into unrestrained sobs. With her face shining with tears, her breast convulsed, she tore her way through thickets and scrambled over rocky spurs, every now and then sending up a quavering cry for the strayed cow. At length, brushing through a copse of bay and alder, she came on the torn face of the hill where the landslide had taken place. The ground was covered with a debris of stones and dead trees. Nature, to repair the damage, was already hiding the rawness of the lacerated expanse under a veil of small sprouting vegetation. Here, through a screen of leaves, she at last caught sight of Bloss’ red and white side. She cried to the cow, who gave a lazy flip of her tail but no other sign of movement. June’s irritated misery gave way to a spasm of rage, and stooping, she picked up a handful of the loose pieces of stone strewn about her, and threw one at the runaway. It struck with a thud. Bloss gave a surprised snort, and, wheeling, brushed through the thicket. June followed her, the stones pressed in a clutching hand against her breast, one now and then launched in the direction of the cow. These missiles, combined with the thought of home, appeared to animate Bloss’ leisurely movements, and she hastened forward through brush and over rock at a lolloping, uncouth trot. The dusk was settling into night when they reached the shed. June’s tears had ceased, but the abstraction of grief held her. She fastened the shed door on the cow, and still absently clasping three or four pieces of stone, entered the house. The door from the balcony gave directly into the living-room. Here, just as she had left him, she found her father. The daughters of Beauregard Allen did not love him with the same fond blindness to his faults that had marked his wife. In the grinding poverty of their later years they could not but see his apathy, the selfishness of his heavy discouragement, the weakness of his tendency to drink. Though the filial sense was strong in them and the example of their mother’s uncomplaining devotion one that they obediently followed, they realized that their father was more a tottering pillar to support than a staff upon which to lean. Now, a vague, dark bulk in the deserted room, so filled with memories of the dead woman, he was a figure of heart-piercing desolation. His daughter moved to the table and said gently: “Why, father dear, are you still sitting in the dark? Why didn’t you light the lamp?”