After the first outburst of feeling she had accepted her fate with a stanch reserve and went on with her duties much as usual. One ear was always close to the ground, you might say, to hear the first rumor of Braddish, either his capture or his whereabouts, that she might fly to him and comfort him, but the rest of her faculties remained in devoted attendance on my sister and me. Only there showed in them now and then a kind of tigerish passionateness, as when I fell off the sea-wall among the boulders and howled so dismally. She leaped down after and caught me to her in the wildest distress, and even when I stopped howling could not seem to put me down. Indeed, she held me so tight that if any of my bones had been cracked by the tumble she must have finished by breaking them. The pathos of her efforts to romp with us as in happier days was lost upon me, I am happy to say. Nor did I, recalling to her what Braddish had said of robbers being inevitably caught, realize that I was stabbing her most cruelly. For she was, or tried to be, firm in the belief that Braddish would succeed where all others had failed. She had asked my father what would happen if Braddish got clean out of the United States, and he, hoping, I suppose, to be of indirect use to the young couple for whom he was heartily sorry, made her out a list of countries, so far as he knew them, wherein there was no extradition. My father hoped, I fondly believe, that she would get the list to Braddish for his guidance, conjecturing rightly that if Braddish made his whereabouts known to anybody it would be to Mary. But as to that, ten days passed before Mary knew a jot more of it than another. And I must believe that it came to her then entirely by inspiration. We were passing the Boole Dogge Farm, my sister and I, intent upon seeing which of us could take the most hops without putting the held-up foot to the ground, when suddenly Mary, who had been strolling along laughing at us, stopped short in her tracks and turned, and stood looking over the green treetops to where the gaunt, dead limb of the hollow oak thrust sharply up from among them. But we had hopped on for quite a piece before we noticed that she no longer went alongside. So we stopped that game and ran back to her. What was it? Had she seen a rabbit? She laughed and looked very wistful. She was just thinking, children, that she would like to see the hollow tree where Will had passed the night. She was not excited--I can swear to that. She guessed nothing as yet. Her desire was really to the tree--as she might have coveted one of Will's baby shoes, or anything that had been his. She had already, poor girl, begun to draw, here and there, upon the past for sustenance.