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He decided then that the occasion justified his going into the house to find out if I had taken my suit-case, or anything that would give a clue. By the time he got back to the cottage it was past four o’clock, and the milkman had been his round. There were now four little bottles on the ledge. This somehow seemed to Herman so alarming a circumstance, with its implication of unexpected detention, that with scarcely more than a glance about the house, he put some crackers and my traveling flask into his pocket and set out almost running for Broken Tree.

He said that he found the place with very little difficulty, and without noticing particularly the way he came. I have thought since it might be one of the conditions of going there, that you must be thinking altogether of other matters and be concerned in the going for something more than yourself.

Herman found the trail and followed it as far as the place of the faggot, and on to the point where I had seen the tall man washing his hair at the spring. Though he could have had no reasonable expectation he had unconsciously counted on finding some trace of me in that neighborhood, and, disappointed in that, was at loss what to do. The trail, which ran out indistinguishably in the meadow, began again on the other side. After losing half an hour in picking it up again, he came on half fearfully, anticipating he knew not what dread evidence at every turn.