Tired of reflecting, and noticing a broad mark, as if wheels had here entered the stream, and a corresponding one on the other side, showing that they had safely emerged from it, Eleanor put her horse at the water, telling William to wait till she was across. The boy was not old enough, nor possessed of sufficient self-confidence, to make the lady pause till he had tried the ford himself; he felt unhappy, but did as he was told. She found herself in a moment in the midst of the roar and the darkness. About the middle of the stream, her horse displayed an evident desire to diverge to the right hand, down-stream. Eleanor, seeing the cart-tracks faintly on the other side, a little to the left, and bewildered with the rush and the noise and the swirl of the waters, became somewhat confused, and persisted in pushing the animal’s head up-stream. In a moment her horse plunged into a hole, so deeply that she felt the water washing round her own knees. She gave an involuntary short cry, and heard a loud despairing— ‘Oh, Lord, miss, what shall I do?’ The tragic utterance restored her to herself. She gave her horse his head, and he, after another wild plunge or two, and a desperate, scraping scramble, succeeded in pulling himself up and taking his own way; went first a little to the right, and then a little to the left, and emerged in the cart-track. Her servant, following, came through high and dry, but with chattering teeth. ‘What is the matter? Are you afraid?’ she asked, and was much astonished to hear the only answer he gave—a piercing view-halloo. There was a moment’s silence, then the halloo was answered from some distance before them, and William, saying, ‘You bide here a minute, miss,’ rode on. ‘What can he be thinking of?’ she speculated, in some annoyance. ‘Leaving me here in the cold! I shall follow him.’ It was a good resolution, but not easy to carry out. She began to feel the cold stealing over every limb, while her soaked habit hung down, and seemed like a mass of ice, dragging her downwards. She could now see only a glimmer of the surrounding country, and the angry beck—black, flecked with specks of white, rushing and roaring as it seemed to her with redoubled force. A feeling of fright and alarm at the loneliness of it, the darkness and the wildness, overcame her. She felt herself trembling in every limb. A wild suspicion that William had taken flight, and did not intend to return, seemed to turn her to stone. She jerked the reins, putting her horse at the little bank she had to climb, with the idea that the motion of riding would restore the circulation to her benumbed limbs; but it did not. She felt the cold seize her very vitals; unconsciously she slipped from her seat, crying out almost without knowing it, ‘William!’