The darkness passed over for a brief time, only to come again with the setting sun, which had sent some lurid gleams of light, like torches to fire the ruin, through the storm, before sinking from sight. A drenching rain fell in torrents, the wind blew chilly and rough. "I will search for her--I will find her, and die beside her mangled remains," murmured Philip, arising and turning toward the forest. The incessant flashes of lightning were his only lamps as he struggled through the intricate mazes of fallen trees. It was a task which despair, not hope, prompted, to toil through rain and wind and darkness, over and under and through splintered trunks and tangled foliage, looking, by the lightning's evanescent glare, for some glimpse of the white bridal robe of his beloved. The hours prolonged themselves into days and weeks to his suffering imagination, and still it was not morning. As if not content with the destruction already wrought, the elements continued to hurl their anger upon the prostrate wilderness; ever and anon the sharp tongue of the lightning would lick up some solitary tree which the wind had left in its hurry; hail cut the fallen foliage, and the rain fell heavily. It was a strange bridal night. Not knowing what moment he might stumble upon the crushed body of some one of his friends, Philip wandered through the storm. He felt more and more as if he were going mad--reason trembled and shuddered at his misfortunes. Two or three times he resolved to dash his brains out against a tree, to prevent himself the misery of going mad and yet living on in those dismal solitudes, till hunger conquered what grief refused to vanquish. Then the lightning would glimmer over some white object, perchance the bark freshly scaled from some shattered trunk, and he would hurry toward it, calling--"Alice!" as once she had called, "Philip," through a less wretched night. It seemed to him that if no other morning began to come before long, the morning of eternity must open its gates upon the world; the strength of the tempest was spent; only fitful gushes of wind swept past; here and there a star looked down hurriedly through the drifting clouds; the solemn roll of the thunder resounded afar, like the drums of an enemy beating a retreat. Exhausted, he sank at the foot of one of those Indian mounds common in western forests. A gleam of the vanishing lightning flickered over the scene. Hardly had it faded into darkness before a voice close to his side whispered his name; a warm hand felt through the night, touching his; a form glowing with life, soft, and tender, albeit its garments were cold and drenched, sank into his outstretched arms. "Yes, Philip, it is I--safe, unhurt. And you--are you uninjured?" He could not answer; his throat was choked with the sweetest tears which ever welled from a man's heart; he could only press her close, close, in the silence of speechless delight.