She had, from their childhood up, always loved and trusted him, and now that he had given her this promise, she implicitly believed him, and dismissed all her disquieting doubts. David Lindsay, meanwhile, magnanimously repressed all exhibition of the bitter mortification and sorrow he experienced. He knew his little playmate too well to blame her. He knew her better than any one else in the world— better than she knew herself. The poor little hunted and helpless fawn had flown to him for refuge, and he would succor her in the way she pleased, not in the way he had wished. She had chosen her place of refuge, and he would take her there. “Gryphynshold,” he slowly repeated, when she had named the selected point of destination. “What a savage and gloomy name, dear! Where is that?” “The name is not more gloomy and savage than the place, I fear. It is situated in the extreme southwestern part of Virginia, on or near the point of juncture with North Carolina and Tennessee. It is said to be the most ancient building in all that region of country; it was erected in a gorge of the Iron Mountains by an eccentric and misanthropical Welshman named Dyvyd-ap-Gryphyn, said by some annalists to have been an outlaw in his own country and a refugee in this. However that might have been, or whether he had any legal right to the land or not, there, in the most terrific yawning abyss of the mountain range, he built a rude stronghold of heavy rock and ponderous timber, and called it Gryphynshold; and there he lived, supporting himself by hunting and fishing, like any other savage denizen of the wilderness, and there at length he married an Indian girl of the Cherokee tribe. From that marriage sprang the race of Gryphyns—a proud, surly, ferocious race of men, the bane of each other, and the terror of their neighborhood.” “It is to be devoutly hoped that they were not a very numerous tribe,” said David Lindsay. “No. I have heard Aunt Agrippina say that there was never more than one child born of any marriage, and that was always a son. Strange, wasn’t it, from generation to generation, only one son to succeed his father?” “Very strange; yet it precluded all possibility of law-suits among the heirs. But how came this ill-omened property into your father’s hands, my dear little lady?” inquired David Lindsay, in a playful tone, assumed to hide the heartache that was torturing him.