Dan caught at this, and declared that the "old hypocrite" was no fool. She knew enough to understand that "it was no way to find a lost boy to shell out a whole township of able-bodied men, and set around a lot."
   The fortune-woman came back to the house, held a final grand seance with the teacup divinity, and declared that the "swate child" was within half a mile of the place, and if they would only look they would find him, and that, if they did not look, within two days "the big black baste would devour the poor, neglected darlin'." After this the fortune-woman was put into the wagon again, and Josh drove her home. It was fully in accordance with the known perversity of human nature, that the faith of the believers in her infallibility was not in the slightest degree shaken.
   The company, having been increased by fresh arrivals to more than one hundred men, organized for the search. The colonel ranged the men in line about twenty feet apart, extending across the wide stubble-field and the pasture. The men were directed by the colonel to "dress to the left;" that is, as he explained it, for each to watch the man at the left, and keep twenty feet from him, and observe all the ground in marching.
   The word was given, and the line, more than half a mile long, began to move sidewise or platoon fashion, sweeping from the road by the house across the clearing to the woods. It was a grand charge upon the great wilderness. The long platoon, under the instruction of their commander, swept the woods bordering the clearing, and then, doubling back, made semicircular curves, going deeper and deeper at each return into the primeval forest. The limit of their marching and counter-marching in one direction was a river too broad to be crossed by fallen trees: it was sure that Willie could not have crossed the river. The termination of the marches in the other direction was controlled by the judgment of the colonel. It was a magnificent tramp through the wild, wet woods, under the giant trees, each eye strained, and expectant of the lost boy. Here and there, in advance of the line as it progressed, a partridge, aroused by the voices of the men, would start from the undergrowth, and trip along a few steps with her sharp, coquettish "quit, quit, quit," and then whir away to some adjacent hollow, to be soon again aroused by the advancing line.
   The afternoon was wearing away. The woods had been thoroughly explored for about two miles from the clearing--far beyond what it seemed possible for an infant less than four years old to penetrate.
   The colonel said he could think of nothing more to be done. The men returned in struggling groups to the farmhouse, tired, sad, hungry, and dispirited. There were many speculations whether Willie could be still alive, and, if alive, whether he could get through another night. "You see," said Josh, "such a little feller, and three days and two nights a-wettin' and a-freezin' and a-thawin', and no grub: why, he couldn't, don't you see?"
   It was never found out, not even in Whiskey Hollow, where the men unveiled all their iniquities, who the wretch was that first started the dark suggestion about the murder of little Willie. Dan became very angry when the men, fatigued and famished, straggling back to the farmhouse from the disorganized line, as above narrated, began to hint that "things was tremendous queer," and that "them as lost could find," and that John, Willie's father, was a perfect hyena when he was "mad."

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