NOT many days after this, a sad and anxious group of people stood beside the ruins of the Heron cottage. Joe Brazybone, or the distracted ghost of him, the trustee, who had thrown over everything else and come with Joe, and the young missionary. The latter had come to visit the school only the day after Isla’s flight; what more natural than that she should join in the search? The trustee had gladly acceded to her petition that she might accompany him. “Yes, yes!” he said; “a woman is the thing. A woman can make her listen; poor lost lamb! Miss Stewart cannot leave her post, and you are the very one we need.”

Here they stood now, looking blankly about them. They had heard, in the village, of the cottage having been burned soon after the Heron children left it, by some wanton boys, who had dared each other to eat their supper in the “Witch-house,” and had built a fire carelessly, and fled when they saw the mischief they had wrought. No one had seen Isla since her return, though one and another had made search for her. Captain Ezekiel spent all the time between the two last trips in searching and calling. He fancied he saw her once, but, if it were she, she had fled at sight or sound of him, and it might have been a young lamb, he said, running quick and light through the woods. He brought food with him, and left it near the ashes of the cottage; when he came again, it was gone, and he hoped the child had taken it.

Where should search begin? The trustee looked about him, hopelessly. If the islanders themselves could not find the lost girl, what could he, a stranger, hope to do? His face brightened as he turned to look at Joe. The man was questing here and there like a hound, spying at every tree, catching at every bent leaf or broken twig. His eyes were closed to sharp blue points, and their glance pierced where it struck. Suddenly he stopped and threw up his head, and, in all his distress, the trustee thought again that the creature wanted a tail to wag, and pitied him his mistaken humanity.

“She’s passed here!” said Joe, speaking for the first time, in a thick, husky voice. “She’s passed here, gentleman and preacher, Isly has. I knowed it before, but I wanted to make surer than sure. Look at here!”

He held up two or three shells strung together, and they recognized part of a shell bracelet that Isla always wore. Joe’s great hand shook as he held it up, and the breath hissed through his teeth.

“We’ll find her, sir!” he said, putting the shells in his bosom. “We’ll find Isly this day. If she’s willin’, that is!” he added, turning upon them almost savagely. “This hull island is Isly Heron’s own dooryard, I want ye to understand, gentleman and preacher. She’s to home here, to go where she likes and do as she likes, and I’d like to see any one try to hender her. She lets common folks live up to the fur end, and that’s because she’s the lady she is. Brazybones know, I tell ye; Brazybones know Herons! And if she don’t want us to find her, why then she won’t be found. But I hope,—” his voice broke and faltered, and the glare died out of his eyes,—“I’m in hopes that my young lady will let us pass the time o’ day with her, seein’ we come so fur, and there’s things old Joe wants to explain to her. There’s things he’s got to say to her, I tell ye. There! we’re losin’ time while I’m palaverin’ here. You foller me, gentleman and lady, and foller soft, if you ever went soft in yer lives!”

He led the way, the others following, through the little Home Valley, as Isla called it, through a narrow rocky pass and over a great brown hill, down into the Dead Valley, which lay beyond. The trustee looked about him with amazement, for, though he had travelled far, he had never seen such a place as this on the earth. He would have asked some questions, but Joe waved him on with feverish eagerness.

“Look here!” he said. “She’s been here, and not so long ago. Look at the yew-bed, here!”

They looked in wonder at the great cushion of trailing yew that spread thick over the ground under one of the dead cedars. It curled close, a perfumed mat; no queen could have a softer couch. Their eyes sought in vain any print of a light form, though Joe was pointing eagerly.

“I tell ye she’s been here!” he repeated. “No place she loved better to sleep in than one of these yew-beds. She mostly never slept within doors in summer, Isly didn’t; and this kind o’ place she loved to lay in. Look! here’s tufts o’ wool in it, too. Mebbe a lamb came and couched down with her for company; they allers loved Isly, and come meechin’ round her whenever she’d go abroad; and mebbe she felt lonesome, and let one of ’em snuggle up to her.”

His voice broke, and he hurried on; the other two felt their own eyes dimmed, as the picture came before them,—the lonely girl lying down to sleep under God’s kind sky, with the wild lamb in her arms.

Still on, in silence now. They had made a circuit, and were coming near the sea again, but through rougher, wilder ways. Deep gorges dropped away before them, black as night, with huge boulders wedged across them; in the wider ones a tiny strip of green, with fresh water trickling down. Here they came to a broad meadow, with black spruces, and rocks of orange-tawny lichen glowing like flame. Again, they found themselves in a moss or bog, with rounded tufts, soft and springy, and purple flags nodding here and there; while higher up (for June had come again) they saw the scarlet sorrel spread like a gay mantle on the great hill shoulder.

At the foot of one of these huge shoulders Joe Brazybone paused, and dropped his head, questing silently; then, with a gesture of caution, he led the way upward.

“Do not call!” they had said in the village. “If you call, or startle her, she will go crazed, if she is not already.”

Joe knew that well, and from time to time he turned fiercely on his companions, almost threatening in his earnest gestures. He would gladly have bidden them stay below, and let him go alone to find his mistress; but he knew, poor Joe, in his humble, dog-like understanding, he knew his voice was not the one that Isla would be most likely to listen to, that his face was not the one to please her best, coming suddenly into her solitude. “Gentle folks wants their like,” he said, patiently to himself. “Old Joe ain’t the proper person to speak first to his young lady, supposin’ she’s willin’ to be spoke to.”

Could they but move silently! The grass was soft and new, and made no sound, but here and there lay dry leaves of last year, caught in the roots of the trees and held there against the blasts that sweep and tear through the winter; these crackled if one touched them; now and again a twig snapped, for the preacher’s dress, gather it close as she could about her, would sometimes float and catch as she passed. Up the huge crag they went, drawing their very breath in fear; and now, Joe, who reached the summit first, flung back his hand, half beckoning, half warning. The others crept nearer. The rock was crested with spruce and cedar; peering though the black fringes, they saw a tiny circle hollowed, carpeted with russet needles and velvet moss, with strawberry and twin-flower creeping together. Here Isla was sitting, braiding her long hair. A leaf, half full of wild strawberries, lay beside her, and with it the broken half of the shell bracelet. Her face was worn with pain, her eyes were dark and soft, with the look of many tears. The black trees bent over her, pressed round her, as if sheltering and protecting her. It was as if she had sought this little secret chamber of the wild rocks, sure of protection and solitude. Who should dare to speak to the island child?

Was there some movement, some sigh? No one else heard it, but Isla suddenly caught her breath; started, turned. For an instant the eyes of the watchers caught hers, full of leaping terror; then, silently, she sprang through the screen of trees, and fled away across the rocks. They must follow her now, as best they might. Keeping out of sight whenever it was possible, the three sped in pursuit; but their hearts sank when they came out full on the further slope of the hill, and saw what lay before them.

Some tremendous convulsion of Nature had in bygone ages struck and shattered this point of the island. There must have been shock upon shock, of awful force, to rear and twist and crush and rend the rocks into these fantastic nightmare shapes. They stretched thus for some distance, a silent tumult, a tempest turned to stone; then came the verge.

Tower on tower, pinnacle on pinnacle, rising, rising. And, looking down, one sheer fall below another; at the foot, the surf leaping, dancing, tossing to and fro, flinging up white arms as if beckoning, entreating.

And from crag to crag ran the wild girl, light as the springing foam itself, flitting now up, now down, but always onward, swift as a bird, never glancing behind her.

Swift as a bird? What birds were these, that swept out from some hidden crevice of the rock, black as itself? They balanced on broad wings, hovered about the child’s head, as if greeting her; then, with hoarse cries, drove heavily forward, keeping near her as she ran.

When Joe Brazybone saw the ravens; he stopped dead. A dizziness seized him, and he sank on his knees, and pulled off his ragged cap. “The woman!” he muttered hoarsely. “Let the woman speak to her! Nothin’ but the ravens can foller her where she’s goin’. Let the woman speak, and you and I’ll stop here and pray.”

The trustee hesitated a moment—measured the gulfs before him with his eye; glanced at the bowed figure beside him; then he, too, dropped to his knees, and motioned to the preacher to try her voice, since her feet could go no further.

But the preacher was a brave woman, and was minded to go yet a step forward. One and two steps she took; then came upon a toppling verge, below which was nothing but the empty air and the tumbling sea below. She recoiled, and for the first time a human voice rang through that awful solitude.

“Isla!” cried the preacher. “Isla, come back! come back to us!”

The girl turned, with a cry, a wild gesture; whether of greeting or defiance, they could not tell. Then—a slip, was it, or a spring? Who shall say? A foam crest tossed high in air, then fell, and swept out through the pale beryl-green, out to the blue beyond. Borne with the great wave, tossing, drifting,—is it a tress of weed torn from the rock? Or has the sea taken his child to himself?

THE END.