It all seemed to the jealous mother-heart to minimize her own sacred
grief. "But he had my child with him, my dead child!" she would shrill
out. And the slow rustic's formulation of a suggestion or a plan must
needs tarry in abeyance as he gazed awestruck at this ghastly apparition,
decked in trim finery, mowing and wringing her hands, shown under the
hood of the phaeton in the blended light of the moon and the
mountaineer's lantern, while his household stood half-clad in the doorway
and peered out, mute and affrighted, as at a spectre.
The scanty population of the district turned out to the last man. The
woods of the vicinity were pervaded with exploring parties, now and again
hallooing their signals, till the crags rang with the melancholy
interchange of hail and hopeless response. In fact, the night was nearly
spent before a hunter, roused by the echoing clamors, joined the search
with the statement that he had been at a "deer stand" in the valley
during the afternoon, and had noted at a distance some object crash down
from the summit of a certain crag.
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