t hasten the cruelty of Le Grand Diable.

CHAPTER III.

NOVICE AND EXPERT.

Though many years have passed since that dismal storm in the spring of
1815, when Hamilton and I spent a long disconsolate night of enforced
waiting, I still hear the roaring of the northern gale, driving round
the house-corners as if it would wrench all eaves from the roof. It
shrieked across the garden like malignant furies, rushed with the boom
of a sea through the cedars and pines, and tore up the mountain slope
till all the many voices of the forest were echoing back a thousand
tumultuous discords. Again, I see Hamilton gazing at the leaping flames
of the log fire, as if their frenzied motion reflected something of his
own burning grief. Then, the agony of our utter helplessness, as long as
the storm raged, would prove too great for his self-control. Rising, he
would pace back and forward the full length of the hunting-room till his
eye would be caught by some object with which the boy had played. He
would put this carefully away, as one lays aside the belongings of the
dead. Afterwards, lanterns, which we had placed on the oak center table
on coming in, began to smoke and give out a pungent, burning smell, and
each of us involuntarily walked across to a window and drew aside the
curtains to see how daylight was coming on. The white glare of early
morning flooded the room, but the snow-storm had changed to driving
sleet and the panes were iced from corner to corner with frozen
rain-drift. How we dragged through two more days, while the gale raved
with unabated fury, I do not know. Poor Eric was for rushing into the
blinding whirl, that turned earth and air into one white tornado; but he
could not see twice the length of his own arm, and we prevailed on him
to come back. On the third night, the wind fell like a thing that had
fretted out its strength. Morning revealed an ocean of billowy drifts,
crusted over by the frozen sleet and reflecting a white dazzle that made
one's eyes blink. Great icicles hung from the naked branches of the
sheeted pines and snow was wreathed in fantastic forms among the cedars.

We had laid our plans while we waited. After lifting the canvas from the
camping-ground and seeking in vain for more trace of the fugitives, we
despatched a dozen different search-parties that very morning, Eric
leading those who were to go on the river-side of the Chateau, and I
some well-trained bushrangers picked from the _ha