She felt that her strength was failing, the strain had been so great upon her nerves during the last twelve hours that she knew she could not endure much more; but she resolved to meet this new danger as bravely as possible, and, stepping forth from her hiding-place, she went forward with dizzy brain and bated breath. Another moment and she found herself face to face with her lover, Adrian Dredmond! CHAPTER XXXIV CONSTERNATION OF THE COOLIDGES During all those hours so full of adventure to Brownie, Mrs. Coolidge and Isabel had been sleeping heavily, for both had been well-nigh overcome with the excitement of the evening previous, and a sense of their own guilt in the matter of the young companion’s disappearance. They did not wake until quite late the next morning, when Mrs. Coolidge’s first act was to order a good hot breakfast, telling the servant that she did not feel able to go down to eat with the family. As soon as the servant departed, and she was assured that the guests were all assembled in the dining-room, she crept into Isabel’s room, and together they sought their prisoner. They drew the bolt, and pushed the door open cautiously. All was silent and dark within, for the candle had burned down to the socket, and then gone out. They entered and called Brownie by name. There was no reply, and with a nameless fear in her heart, Isabel rushed back into her own room, lighted another candle, and returned to explore the cell. One glance served to show that it was empty! But with the vain hope that all guilty people have they began turning over the mattress and bedclothes, as if they expected to find her concealed underneath them. “Where can she be?” gasped Isabel, white as the wrapper which she wore, and shaking as with the ague. Mrs. Coolidge shook her head, and looked up at the small grated window above them. She mounted upon the chair, and seizing one of the heavy bars, shook it. It did not so much as move, and even had it been possible to remove it, their captive could not possibly have reached the window to escape, it was set so high in the wall. “Isabel, I firmly believe that girl is a witch, for none but a spirit could have escaped from this dungeon!” “Mamma,” exclaimed her daughter, suddenly, “I do not believe you fastened the door last night, and she came out when we were asleep!” “How foolish you are,” was the impatient reply. “I am very sure that I shoved the bolt, and I do not believe it possible that she could have worked upon the door in any way to have slipped it back.” However, to satisfy themselves, they went out, shut and bolted the door, and then tried, by gentle working it back and forth, to see if the bolt would slip. No; it remained firm and tight, and the matter still continued to be a mystery, and a terribly tantalizing one, too.