Fear struck us then. We searched, at first laughingly, then with stark horror overwhelming us. The little island was all too easy to search. There were no caves, no cliff over which she could have fallen. We had seen all the beach and the near-by water within a few moments after her disappearance. Surely there had not been time for her to swim out and be drowned. She was a fair swimmer, and cautious for all her youth. And even if she had gone back in the water and got into distress, we were so close we could have heard at once any call she made. But she was gone. Vanished. No boat had landed that could have taken her. That was impossible without our seeing it over that reach of empty sea. I recall our frantic search. Then at last Drake and I alone frantically rowed back home to tell father. It was like a dream of horror. Father's white, solemn face. He never once reproached Drake or me. He telephoned the village. Then came another trip to the island in a launch with grave-faced men. But Dianne was never found. We brought back her clothes that lay untouched there by the underbrush at the beach. I could not look at them, but went into my bedroom and lay on the bed and sobbed. It was the first tragedy that life had brought me. Night had fallen when Drake came to me. He leaned over me sympathetically. "Take it easy, kid." His own face was white and drawn; he loved Dianne as much as I did, but he was older, more stoical. "Father wants to see us, Frank. Get hold of yourself." His arm went around my shoulder and I huddled against him, "Take it easy—wash your face and come on down." It was about Dianne—father had something to tell us. We faced him in the living room. He closed its doors. "Sit down, lads." It may have been in Drake's thoughts, certainly it was in mine, that now father was about to blame us. I had felt, those hours sobbing on the bed, that somehow I was to blame. That incident in the water when I had annoyed Dianne about her hair—wild thoughts swept me that I had annoyed her and she had committed suicide. I had already told father about it; told him in the launch. He had listened and waved it away. He sat facing us now, a slender, solemn man of fifty, with iron-gray hair, and thin, studious face. His eyes behind his big horn-rimmed spectacles seemed unnaturally bright, but gentle. He said, "Don't look at me like that, lads—I've no intention of reproaching you." And then he told us, in a burst, without preface, what we had never suspected. "You were about two years old, Frank—and you, Drake, about eight. It was the year before your mother died. She and I went to Bird's Nest Island, leaving you children at home." This same island! "A summer day," he said, "just about like this. We went for a picnic—just as you did today. It was fifteen years ago. We were wandering about the little island—your mother and I. We heard a wailing cry, an infant's. In a thicket we found a little girl baby. Unharmed. An infant, about a year old, who evidently had been asleep and now had awakened and was crying. There was no boat in sight about this island. We concluded that some one had been there, abandoned the baby and departed. We took the baby home. No one ever came to claim her. It was Dianne."