After this they sat in pensive silence, unconscious of the progress of time, but with the feeling that the day was prolonged to infinite duration. It was like the day of a funeral; and yet, a lurking sense of tremulous expectancy fluttered the hearts of those silent mourners. A step on the stair, the sudden sound of voices at the inn-door, threw Helen into a fever. Sometimes she half rose from her chair, pale, breathless, listening. The cry almost broke from her lips, “He is here!” But the footstep passed by--the voice that for the moment sounded familiar grew strange--and she knew that her hopes had deluded her. It is so difficult for youth not to hope. The waves could not have devoured so much genius, so much goodness. Even pitiless ocean must needs be too merciful to destroy Eustace Thorburn. Some such thought as this lurked in Helen’s mind. While Theodore de Bergerac and his daughter sat alone, absorbed in this one bitter anxiety, Daniel Mayfield wandered helplessly to and fro between the “William Wallace” and the harbour, or the road to Halko’s Head--now going one way, now another, but continually returning to the inn-door, to ask, with a countenance that was piteous in its assumed tranquillity, if anything had been heard of the missing man. The answer was always the same--nothing had been heard. The landlord, and some of the hangers-on of the inn, tried to comfort Daniel with feeble suggestions as to what the young man might have done with himself. Others made no attempt to hide their gloomy convictions. “It isn’t the first time a stranger has lost his life on those sands,” they said, in their northern patois. “Folks that have gone to see St. Kentigern’s Cave, and would go without a guide, have paid dearly for their folly.” Daniel Mayfield scarcely heard this remark about the cave. The fears, or indeed the certainties, of these people could scarcely be darker than his own. He told himself that he should never look upon his nephew’s living face again. “Dead I may see him--the dear, bright face beaten and bruised against those hellish cliffs; but living, never more; oh, never more! my more than son--my pride--my hope--my love!” And then he remembered how he had hoped to hold his nephew’s children in his arms. He had almost felt the soft, clinging hands upon his neck. “I was created to end my days as old Uncle Dan,” he had said to himself. Now the day-dream was gone. This brighter life, in which he had found it so easy to renew his own youth, was broken off untimely--this dear companionship, which had made him a boy, was taken from him. Down to dusty death he must tramp alone, between a lane of printer’s devils clamorous for copy, and insatiable editors for ever demanding that each denunciatory leader, or scathing review, or Juvenalistic onslaught on the social vices of his day, should be racier and more trenchant than the last.