Part Four - Vignettes from Home Life

I

August 20.

Paul had been sent for blue-berries through the Eagle Rock woods to the
high upland pasture where the Powers cows fed during the day. On the
upper edge of that, skirting a tract of slash left from an old cutting,
was a berry-patch, familiar to all the children of Crittenden's valley.

When at four o'clock there was no sign of him, and then at five still
none, Marise began to feel uneasy, although she told herself that
nothing in the world could happen to Paul on that well-known
mountain-side. He had taken Médor with him, who would certainly have
come for help if Paul had fallen and hurt himself. She excused herself
to the tall, awkward lad from North Ashley come to try over his part in
a quartet, asked Touclé to help Elly set the supper things on the table
if she should be late, and set off at a rapid pace by the short-cut over
the ledges.

As she hurried over the rough trail, frankly hastening, now frankly
alarmed, she thought that probably for all the life-time of the people
in the valley the death of Frank Warner would set a sinister element of
lurking danger in those familiar wooded slopes. Nothing could have
happened to Paul, but still she hurried faster and faster, and as she
came near the upper edge of the pasture she began to shout loudly,
"Paul! Paul!" and to send out the high yodel-cry that was the family
assembly call. That act of shouting brought her a step nearer to panic.