Tried for Her Life. Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

nothing came of it, and his anxiety grew to terror, and he ran wildly about shouting her name till all the mountain rocks and glens echoed and reëchoed:

      "Sybil! Sybil!"

      And now he was joined by Joe, whose faithful and affectionate heart was wrung with anxiety and distress for his beloved and missing young mistress.

      "You can't find her? Oh, Marster, where is she gone? What have become of her? Oh, what shall we do?" he cried, wringing his hands in great trouble.

      "We must search for her, Joe. This is very strange, and very alarming," said Mr. Berners, striking off into the path that led to the fountain, and shouting her name at every step.

      But only the mountain echoes answered. In an agony of anxiety they beat about the woods and thickets, and climbed the rocks and went down into the glens, still shouting—always shouting her name.

      Day broadened, the sun arose, and its first rays struck them as they stood upon the heights behind the chapel, looking all over the wilderness.

      "In the name of Heaven, now what are we to do?" exclaimed Lyon Berners, speaking more to himself than to another.

      Joe was standing, leaning upon his stick in an attitude of the deepest despair. But suddenly he raised his head, and a gleam of light shot over his dark face, as he said:

      "I tell you what we can do, Marster: where she's took to, we can find out at all ewents. I say where she's took to, for she never went of her own accords."

      "Heaven help my poor darling! no; she never did. But how do you think you can trace her, Joe?"

      "This a-way! I'll take the freshest of them horses, and ride home as fast as I can for life and death; and I'll snatch up her little dog as has been pining away ever since she left, and I'll bring it here and make it smell to the bedclothes where she lay, and then put it on the scent, to lead us the way she went."

      "Eureka, Joe! The instinct of faithful affection, in man or brute, sometimes puts pure reason to the blush by its superior acumen," exclaimed Mr. Berners.

      "I don't know no more 'n the dead what you're a-talking about, Marster; but that's the way to find out where Miss Sybil was took," answered practical Joe.

      "Come, then, we will go at once and look at the horses. I think, Joe, that one of your cart horses would be better to take, as they have not been so hard worked as ours," said Mr. Berners, as they ran down the steep to the thicket in the rear of the chapel, where they had left their horses.

      In a very few minutes Joe had selected and saddled his horse, and stood ready to start.

      "I needn't tell you to be prudent, Joe, and to drop no hint of your errand," said Mr. Berners.

      "Well, no, you needn't take that there trouble, Marse Lyon, 'cause you'd be a-cautioning of Joe, as is cautious enough a'ready. Good-morning, Marse Lyon. I'll be at Black Hall afore the fam'ly is well out of bed, and I'll be back here with the little dog afore you have time to get unpatient," said Joe, climbing into his saddle and riding away.

      Mr. Berners returned to the chapel, where he found the fire smouldering out, but everything else in the same condition in which he had left it when he went in pursuit of Sybil.

      Far too restless to keep still, he walked up and down the length of the chapel, until he was fairly tired out. Then he went to the front door and sat down, keeping his eyes upon the entrance of the little thicket path, by which he knew that Joe must return. And although he knew it was much too early to expect his messenger back, yet he still impatiently watched that path.

      Presently the sound of approaching horsemen struck upon his listening ear. They were coming up the path through the thicket, and presently they emerged from it—not two or three, but couple after couple, until the old churchyard was filled with sheriff's officers and militia-men. Sheriff Benthwick himself was at their head.

      In great surprise, as if they had come in quest of him, Mr. Berners went forward to receive the party.

      Lyon Berners was known to have been the companion of his fugitive wife, and therefore a sort of an outlaw; yet the sheriff took off his hat, and accosted him respectfully.

      "Mr. Berners, I am greatly surprised to see you here," he said.

      "Not less than myself at seeing you," answered Lyon.

      "We are here to seek out a set of burglars whom we have reason to believe have their lair in this chapel," said Mr. Benthwick.

      "Then your errand is not to me," observed Lyon.

      "Certainly not! Though, should I find Mrs. Berners here, as well as yourself, as I think now highly probable, I shall have a most painful duty to perform."

      "Ah, sir! within the last terrible month, I have become all too much accustomed to the sight of friends with 'painful duties to perform,' as they delicately put it. But you will be spared the pain. Mrs. Berners is not here with me."

      "Not here with you? Then where is she?"

      "Excuse me, Mr. Benthwick," said Mr. Berners, gravely; "you certainly forget yourself; you cannot possibly expect me to tell you—even if I knew myself," he added, in an undertone.

      "No, I cannot, indeed," admitted the sheriff. "Nor did I come here to look for Mrs. Berners, having had neither information nor suspicion that she was here; nevertheless, if I find her I shall be constrained to arrest her. Were it not for my duty, I could almost pray that I might not find her."

      "I do not think you will," said Mr. Berners, grimly.

      And meanwhile the officers and the militia-men, at a sign from the sheriff, had surrounded the chapel so that it would be impossible for any one who might be within its walls to escape from it.

      "Now, Mr. Berners, as you assure me that your wife is not within this building, perhaps you may have no objection to enter it with me," said the sheriff.

      "Not the least in the world," answered Lyon Berners, leading the way into the chapel, as the sheriff dismounted from his horse, threw the bridle to an attendant, and followed.

      The interior was soon thoroughly searched, having nothing but its bare walls and vacant windows, with the exception of Sybil's forsaken bed near the altar, the smouldering fire in what had once been the middle aisle, and the little pile of brushwood in the corner.

      "There is certainly no one here but yourself, Mr. Berners; yet here are signs of human habitation," said the sheriff significantly.

      Lyon Berners laughed painfully. And then he thought it would be safest to inform the sheriff of some part of the truth, rather than to leave him to his own conjectures, which might cover the whole case. So he answered:

      "I do not mind telling you, Mr. Benthwick, that myself and my injured wife took refuge in this place immediately after the terrible tragedy that so unjustly compromised her safety. We remained here several days, and then departed. These things that you notice had been brought for our accommodation, and were left here when we went away."

      "So you were not at Pendleton's?"

      "Not for an hour."

      "That is strange. But how comes it that you are here now without your wife, Mr. Berners?"

      "Sir, I have told you all that I mean to tell, and now my lips are sealed on the subject of my wife," said Lyon Berners, firmly.

      "I cannot and do not blame you in the least," said the sheriff, kindly.

      "All that we have to do now, is to pursue our search for the burglars, and if in the course of it we should come upon Mrs. Berners, we must do our duty," he concluded.

      "To that proposition Mr. Berners assented with a silent bow and bitterly compressed lips. The sheriff then went to the door of the vault, and stooping down with his hands upon his knees, peered through the iron grating, more in curiosity than in any hope of finding a clue to the robbers. And in fact he discovered nothing but the head of that narrow staircase