“I think I’ll wait a few days,” said Howard, his tone corresponding to the look in his eyes and the compression of his resolute mouth.
The next day but one Mr. Bowring called him up to the City Desk and gave him a newspaper-clipping which read:
“Bald Peak, September 29--Willie Dent, the three-year-old baby of John Dent, a farmer living two miles from here, strayed away into the mountains yesterday and has not been seen since. His dog, a cur, went with him. Several hundred men are out searching. It has been storming, and the mountains are full of bears and wild cats.”
“Yes, I saw this in the _Herald_,” said Howard.
“Will you take the train that leaves at eleven tonight and get us the story--if it is not a ‘fake,’ as I strongly suspect. Telegraph your story if there is not time for you to get back here by nine to-morrow night.”
“Of course it’s a fake, or at least a wild exaggeration,” thought Howard as he turned away. “If Bowring had not been all but sure there was nothing in it, he would never have given it to me.”
He was not well, his sleepless nights having begun to tell even upon his powerful constitution. The rest of that afternoon and all of a night without sleep in the Pullman he was in a depth of despond. He had been in the habit of getting much comfort out of an observation his father had made to him just before he died: “Remember that ninety per cent of these fourteen hundred million human beings are uncertain where to-morrow’s food is to come from. Be prudent but never be afraid.” But just then he could get no consolation out of this maxim of grim cheer. He seemed to himself incompetent and useless, a predestined failure. “What is to become of me?” he kept repeating, his heart like lead and his mind fumbling about in a confused darkness.
At Bald Peak he was somewhat revived by the cold mountain air of the early morning. As he alighted upon the station platform he spoke to the baggage-master standing in front of the steps.
“Was the little boy of a man named Dent lost in the mountains near here?”
“Yes--three days ago,” replied the baggage-man.
“No--nor never will alive--that’s my opinion.”
Howard asked for the nearest livery-stable and within twenty minutes was on his way to Dent’s farm. His driver knew all about the lost child. Two hundred men were still searching. “And Mrs. Dent, she’s been sittin’ by the window, list’nin’ day and night. She won’t speak nor eat and she ain’t shed a tear. It was her only child. The men come in sayin’ it ain’t no use to hunt any more, an’ they look at her an’ out they goes ag’in.”