And her ideas immediately reverted to the other alternative for which she had before made up her mind, in case the party did not return within the month; but which, having been kept in the background of her thoughts, by her hope of their coming, now occurred to her with startling effect. She fancied Claud the victim of outrage or misfortune,--perhaps wounded and dying, by the same hand that might have previously struck down his father,--perhaps taken sick on his way home alone, and now lying helpless in the woods, where none could witness his sufferings or hear his cries for assistance. The thought sent a pang through her bosom, the more painful because, being something like a legitimate conclusion of her previous reasoning, she could not divest herself of it. She stood bewildered in the woes of her thick-coming fancies. The images thus conjured up from her distracting anxieties and excited brain, all heightened by the natural inspirations of the place and the hour, soon became to her vivid realities. And her burning thoughts at once insensibly ran into the form and spirit of one of the many beautiful plaints of England's gifted poetess: "I heard a song upon the wandering wind, A song of many tones, though one full soul Breathed through them all imploringly; and made All nature, as they pass'd,--all quivering leaves, And low responsive reeds and waters,--thrill, As with the consciousness of human prayer. ------the tones Were of a suppliant. '_Leave me not_' was still The burden of their music." "I will _not_ leave you!" she exclaimed, startling the silent glens and grottos around by the wild energy of her tones, and eagerly stretching out her hands towards the imagined scene, and the suppliant for her ministering services, "O Claud, I will come to you. My love, my life, my more than life, I will soon be with you! Go after him?" she resumed, after a sudden pause, to which she seemed to be brought by recalling her thoughts to their wonted channel, and being startled at the sober import of her own words. "Go in search of him in the woods! Yes," she added, after another long and thoughtful pause,--"yes, why not? I cannot, O, I _cannot_ stay here another day, with these but too prophetic words, I fear, ringing in my ears. To be in the same wilderness with him were a pleasure, to the insupportable suspense I must suffer here. If I discover all to be well, I need not show myself; but, if it be as I fear, O, what happiness to be near him! Yes, it is decided; I will start in the morning." And, hastily descending from her stand, with the firm, quick step and decisive air of one whose purpose is fixed, she struck off directly for the house; where, after a few hasty preparations, she retired to her bed, and, happily, after the exhausting cares of the day, was soon quieted into sound and refreshing slumber.