True, she was well clad when she went out that afternoon to play, but her hood was gone and she could not escape the biting wind that pierced the heavy clothing of Harvey himself.

Then, too, there was the danger from the wild beasts, of which he had had too late an experience to forget.
Should it prove that Dollie went off in the manner named, then Harvey made a great error in setting out alone to search for her.

He ought to have roused the village, and, with the hundreds scouring the mountains, helped by torches and dogs, discovery could not be delayed long.
The other and darker theory was that she had been seen by some of his enemies as she went into the woods and had been coaxed to some out-of-the-way place, where her abductors meant to hold and use her as a means of bringing the superintendent to terms.

All must have known that no method could be so effective as that.
It was hard to believe that the evil-minded men would go any further.
Yet it was easy for them to do so; they could make way with a little child like her and have it seem that her death was caused by falling over the rocks or by some other accident that might easily come to her.
"O'Hara and Hansell must have known all about it when I was in their cabin.

They were afraid to assail me in the cabin, for I was prepared, and the fear of the law kept them from following me after I left their place." Harvey was thinking hard when he caught the well-known light, among the trees in the cabin.
"He, Tom and Jack, precious scamps all of them, are exulting over the sorrow they have caused, but they shall pay for it." The latch-string had not yet been withdrawn.