s impossible for me to tell you,' was my reply. 'If she was to be
found in my house, you must have found her. As you have not, there is
but one conclusion to draw. She is not within these walls.'

"'She is not outside of them. I set a watch in the beginning, at the
four corners of the house. None of my men have seen so much as a flutter
of her dress. She is here, I say, and I ask you to give her up.'

"'This I am perfectly willing to do,' I rejoined, 'but I do not know
where to find her. Let that but once be done, and I shall not stand in
the way of your rights.'

"'Very well,' he cried. 'I will not search further to-night; but
to-morrow--' A meaning gesture finished his sentence; he turned to the
young man. 'As for you,' he cried, 'you will remain here. Unpleasant as
it may be for us both, we will keep each other's company till morning. I
do not insist upon conversation.' And without waiting for a reply, the
sturdy old soldier took up his station in the doorway, by which action
he not only shut the young man in, but gave himself a position of
vantage from which he could survey the main hall and the most prominent
passages.

"The rest were under charge of his followers, whom he had stationed all
through the house, just as if it were in a state of siege. One guarded
the east door and another the west, and on each landing of the staircase
a sentinel stood, silent but alert, like a pair of living statues.

"I did not sleep that night; the mystery of the whole affair would have
kept me awake even if my indignation had let me rest. I sat in the
kitchen with my girls, and when the morning came, I joined the general
again with offers of a breakfast.

"But he would eat nothing till he had gone through the house again; nor
would he, in fact, eat here at all; for his second search ended as
vainly as his first, and he was by this time so wroth, not only at the
failure to recover his child, but at the loss which his dignity had
suffered by this failure, that he had no sooner reached this spot, and
found the young husband still standing where he had left him, than with
a smothered execration, leveled not only at him, but the whole house, he
strode out through the doorway, and finding his horse ready saddled in
front, mounted and rode away, followed by all his troop.

"And now comes the strangest part of the tale.

"He was no sooner gone, and the dust from his horse's hoofs lost in the
distance, than I turned to the young hus