It would be difficult to describe the rage and fury of our captain of loyalists when he made this discovery. The reader will imagine it all. But what was to be done? Was the prey to be entirely lost? And by what agency had Brough made his escape? He had been securely fastened, it was thought, and in such a way as seemed to render it impossible that he should have been extricated from his bonds without the assistance of another. This conjecture led to a renewal of the search. The rope which fastened the negro lay upon the ground, severed, as by a knife, in several places. Now, Brough could not use his hands. If he could, there would have been no sort of necessity for using his knife. Clearly, he had found succor from another agency than his own. Once more our loyalists darted into the recesses of Bear Castle, their torches were to be seen flaring in every part of that dense patch of swamp forest, as they waved them over every spot which seemed to promise concealment to the fugitive. “Hark!” cried Dunbar, whose ears were quickened by eager and baffled passions. “Hark! I hear the dip of a paddle.” He was right. They darted forth from the woods, and when they reached the river’s edge, they had a glimpse of a small dark object, which they readily conceived to be a canoe, just rounding one of the projections of the shore and going out of sight, a full hundred yards below. Here was another mystery. The ramifications of Bear Castle seemed numerous; and, mystified as well as mortified, Dunbar, after a tedious delay, and a search fruitlessly renewed, took up the line of march back for old Sabb’s cottage, inly resolved to bring the fair Frederica to terms, or, in some way, to make her pay the penalty for his disappointments of the night. He little dreamed how much she had to do with them, nor that her hand had fired the forest grasses, whose wild and terrific blaze had first excited the apprehensions and compelled the caution of the fugitives. It is for us to show what further agency she exercised in this nocturnal history.