The wood began to resound with calls, which were answered from far and near as the belated ones came hurrying from fishing and hunting and isolated huts. In the middle meadow the treasure hunters sat together on the ground. Persilope walked up and down. Around the edge of the wood ran the whisper and jostle of fresh arrivals. Now and then Persilope took note of them, awaiting the last impatiently for the time to speak. The sun traveled seaward, and the fan-spread, vaporous rays of blueness ranged through the redwoods and melted into twilight. The noise of coming fell off by degrees, and every man began to count and question to know for whom they waited. It appeared the Maiden Ward was still abroad. She had gone that afternoon with the one keeper and two women to the ridge behind Deep Fern to dig certain roots for dyeing. She was late returning. Two or three stars had come out in the twilit space when far back under the redwoods there was the sound of a man running. The _pad, pad_ of his feet on the thick needles drew near, burst upon us, cleared the ring of listeners and carried the man full into the open, gasping and panting.
“Gone! Gone!” he shouted. “Lost! Seized and stolen!”
The words, sharp and startling, brought all the sitters to their feet like the cracking of a whip.
“Who? Who, and where?” cried Prassade, taking the man, who was the fourth keeper, by the shoulders and wheeling him round face to face. “Is it my daughter? What have you done with her?”
“Gone!” he declared again in the midst of panting.
“Of her own will? When? In what direction?” With every question Prassade shook him as if he would have jolted the answer out of him in default of words.
“Let me breathe. Just now. I came as fast as I could. Not of her own will, I think. There were others—one other.”
The man struggled with his agitation. Persilope counseled patience; the hearers closed round him in a ring, as he grew more coherent.
They were out, he said, on sodden ground along the foot of the Laurel Bank, he and the two women digging roses. Zirriloë strayed along the lower edge of the Bank. There was a toyon bush, full berried, grown up among the laurels, and she gathered the scarlet clusters for her hair.