erve, would, I fancy, be very agreeable to men older than I was,
either in constitution or even in experience. I doubt whether any man
under fifty would have been more anxious than myself to cut short our
period of repose, broken as it was, when I refused to listen to her
tearful penitence and self-reproach, by occasional words and looks of
gratitude and admiration. I did, however, remember that it was
expedient to refasten the window, and re-attach the seals, before
departing. At the end of the hour's rest I allowed my charge and
myself, I had recovered more or less completely the nervous force
which had been for a while utterly exhausted, less by the effort than
by the terror that preceded it. I was neither surprised, nor perhaps
as much grieved as I should have been, to find that Eveena could
hardly walk; and felt to the full the value of those novel conditions
which enabled me to carry her the more easily in my arms, though much
oppressed even by so slight an effort in that thin air, to the place
where we had left our carriage--no inconsiderable distance by the path
we had to pursue. Before starting on our return I had, in despite of
her most earnest entreaties, managed to recover her head-dress and
veil, at a risk which, under other circumstances, I might not have
cared to encounter. But had she been seen without it on our return,
the comments of the whole neighbourhood would have been such as might
have disturbed even her father's cool indifference. We reached her
home in safety, and with little notice, having, of course, drawn the
canopy around us as completely as possible. I was pleased to find that
only her younger sister, to whose care I at once committed her, was
there at present, the elders not having yet returned. I took care to
detach from the bird's neck the tablet which had served its purpose so
well. The creature had found his way home within half-an-hour after I
dismissed him, and had frightened Zevle [Stella] not a little; though
the message, which a fatal result would have made sufficiently
intelligible to Esmo, utterly escaped her comprehension.

CHAPTER VIII - A FAITH AND ITS FOUNDER.

On the return of the family, my host was met at the door with such
accounts of what had happened as led him at once to see and question
his daughter. It was not, therefore, till he had heard her story that
I saw him. More agitated than I should have expected from one under
ordinary circumstances so calm and self