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“Who is it?” she asked, in a hoarse, eager under tone, as a servant came up after answering the bell.

“Mrs. Gordon’s man. He called to ask if we’d heard anything from Mr. Albert yet.”

Mrs. Martindale came back into her chamber with a whiter face and unsteady steps, not replying. The servant stood looking after her with a countenance in which doubt and pity were mingled; then turned and went down stairs.

I did not go home until evening. All day the snow fell drearily, and the wind sighed and moaned along the streets, or shrieked painfully across sharp angles, or rattled with wild, impatience the loose shutters that obstructed its way. Every hour had its breathless suspense or nervous excitement. Messengers came and went perpetually. As the news of Albert’s prolonged absence spread among his friends and the friends of the family, the circle of search and inquiry became larger and the suspense greater. To prevent the almost continual ringing of the bell, it was muffled, and a servant stationed by the door to receive or answer all who came.

Night dropped down, shutting in with a strange suddenness, as some heavier clouds darkened the west. Up to this period not a single item of intelligence from the absent one had been gained since, as related by one of the young Gordons, he parted from him between two and three o’clock in the morning, and saw him take his way down one of the streets, not far from his home, leading to the river. It was snowing fast at the time, and the ground was already well covered. Closer questioning of the young man revealed the fact that Albert Martindale was, at the time, so much intoxicated that he could not walk steadily.

“I looked after him,” said Gordon, “as he left me, and saw him stagger from side to side; but in a few moments the snow and darkness hid him from sight. He was not far from home, and would, I had no doubt, find his way there.”

Nothing beyond this was ascertained on the first day of his absence. I went home soon after dark, leaving Mrs. Martindale with other friends. The anguish I was suffering no words can tell. Not such anguish as pierced the mother’s heart; but, in one degree sharper, in that guilt and responsibility were on my conscience.

Three days went by. He had vanished and left no sign! The whole police of the city sought for him, but in vain. Their theory was that he had missed his home, and wandered on towards the docks, where he had been robbed and murdered and his body cast into the river. He had on his person a valuable gold watch, and a diamond pin worth over two hundred dollars–sufficient temptation for robbery and murder if his unsteady feet had chanced to bear him into that part of the city lying near the river.

All hope of finding Albert alive was abandoned after a week’s agonizing suspense, and Mr. Martindale offered a reward of five hundred dollars for the recovery of his son’s body. Stimulated by this offer, hundreds of boatmen began the search up and down the rivers and along the shores of the bay, leaving no point unvisited where the body might have been borne by the tides. But over large portions of this field ice had formed on the surface, closing up many small bays and indentations of the land. There were hundreds of places into any one of which the body might have floated, and where it must remain until the warm airs of spring set the water free again. The search was fruitless.

Mrs. Martindale, meantime, had lapsed into a state of dull indifference to everything but her great sorrow. That absorbed her whole mental life. It was the house in which her soul dwelt, the chamber of affliction wherein she lived, and moved, and had her being–so darkly draped that no light came in through the windows. Very still and passionless she sat here, refusing to be comforted.