"And so you think she's drowned herself?" he cried. I turned away my
face.
"What on earth should the young woman do that for?" exclaimed Silas,
his eyes half out of his head with mere surprise. "Why, she has more
means than she can use or waste, and lacks nothing to make her
comfortable, but a husband, and that's an article she could have, any
day. There's some mistake about this, I tell you!"
"Come," said I, shuddering; "let us go and ascertain the truth."
"Well, well," answered Silas Foster; "just as you say. We'll take the
long pole, with the hook at the end, that serves to get the bucket out
of the draw-well when the rope is broken. With that, and a couple of
long-handled hay-rakes, I'll answer for finding her, if she's anywhere
to be found. Strange enough! Zenobia drown herself! No, no; I don't
believe it. She had too much sense, and too much means, and enjoyed
life a great deal too well."
When our few preparations were completed, we hastened, by a shorter
than the customary route, through fields and pastures, and across a
portion of the meadow, to the particular spot on the river-bank which I
had paused to contemplate in the course of my afternoon's ramble. A
nameless presentiment had again drawn me thither, after leaving Eliot's
pulpit. I showed my companions where I had found the handkerchief, and
pointed to two or three footsteps, impressed into the clayey margin,
and tending towards the water. Beneath its shallow verge, among the
water-weeds, there were further traces, as yet unobliterated by the
sluggish current, which was there almost at a standstill. Silas Foster
thrust his face down close to these footsteps, and picked up a shoe
that had escaped my observation, being half imbedded in the mud.
"There's a kid shoe that never was made on a Yankee last," observed he.
"I know enough of shoemaker's craft to tell that. French manufacture;
and see what a high instep! and how evenly she trod in it! There never
was a woman that stept handsomer in her shoes than Zenobia did. Here,"
he added, addressing Hollingsworth, "would you like to keep the shoe?"
Hollingsworth started back.
"Give it to me, Foster," said I.
I dabbled it in the water, to rinse off the mud, and have kept it ever
since. Not far from this spot lay an old, leaky punt, drawn up on the
oozy river-side, and generally half full of water. It served the
angler to go in quest of pickerel, or the sportsman to pick up his wild
ducks. Setting this crazy bark afloat, I seated myself in the stern
with the paddle, while Hollingsworth sat in the bows with the hooked
pole, and Silas Foster amidships with a hay-rake.