Was that the tread of a horse? Fancy plays strange tricks with those who watch, but surely that sound resembled nothing so much as the quick beat of hoofs upon grass or heather. Then the sound ceased, and a long tantalising pause succeeded. Ethel began to imagine that her senses must have played her false. No; for the rattling of loose stones, disturbed by a human foot, at the outer portal of the Hunger Hole, came at last to confirm the first impression that a horse’s tramp had really sounded near, and then a man’s form darkened the doorway between the two caves. ‘Alice, look up! We are found!’ cried Ethel, starting from the rocky bench; and almost at the same instant a voice, the very sound of which sent the blood madly coursing through her veins, exclaimed: ‘There _is_ some one here then. Alice—Miss Gray, can it be you? Ah! I see how it is,’ added the speaker, as his further progress was barred by the gaping chasm, while his foot struck against a fragment of the broken bridge, yet clinging to its rusted holdfast in the rock. The voice was Lord Harrogate’s. ‘What good angel sent you to our help, brother?’ said young Lady Alice, laughing and crying all at once, now that the tension of her overstrained nerves had slackened. ‘She is a moorland angel, and here she is to answer for herself,’ returned the young man, as Betty Mudge, hot and panting, appeared beside him in the entrance of the cavern. ‘This good girl must have wings, I think, as well as a sharp pair of eyes. She almost kept up with my horse as we crossed the moorland, avoiding Bitternley Swamp, where _Bay Middleton_ could never have made his way over the treacherous peat-hags. I can guess now how this awkward business happened.’ ‘But how to get at you, now I have found you!’ added Lord Harrogate in some perplexity, after a pause. It was provoking, to be baffled by the eleven feet of sheer black emptiness that lay between the wet outer grotto and the dry inner compartment of the cave. ‘Some one will perhaps arrive before long. A plank put across the gap would set us free,’ said Ethel, advancing to the edge of the chasm. ‘I wanted to jump it, but Miss Gray would not let me try,’ called out Lady Alice. ‘And Miss Gray was quite right, Miss Madcap,’ answered her brother, scanning the width of the abyss. ‘An uglier jump, or a less inviting, I never saw—at all events for a young lady to venture on. The worst of it is, that nobody excepting myself and this excellent Betty Mudge here, is in the secret of the Hunger Hole; so nobody is coming with ropes or planks or civilised contrivances of any sort. I have tied my horse to a bush below, just by the dead alder-tree; but I can’t well make a suspension-bridge out of reins and saddle-girths, after all.’ ‘Please ye, my lord,’ put in Betty, who had by this time recovered her breath—‘please ye, I might run across to Farmer Fletcher’s town, and ask him to get chaise ready for the ladies, and send some of his men with things ’cross Swamp.’