The wind was unusually high, although the day was otherwise lovely, and she was scarcely able to stand against the strong breeze, especially as every breath seemed to increase the pain in her temples; but she persisted. The nearest path lay through a thick shrubbery, almost a wood, which the family never used, and, in fact, the younger members were prohibited from taking, but secrecy and haste were all which at that moment entered Ellen's mind. She felt so exhausted by the wind blowing the branches and leaves noisily and confusedly around, that on reaching a sort of grassy glade, more open than her previous path, she sat down a minute on a mossy stone. The wind blew some withered sticks and leaves toward her, and, among them, two or three soiled pieces of thin paper, stained with damp, one of which she raised mechanically, and started up with a wild cry, and seized the others almost unconsciously. She pressed her hands over her eyes, and her lips moved in the utterance of thanksgiving. "Saved!--Edward and myself, too!--some guardian angel must have sent them!" if not actually spoken, were so distinctly uttered in her heart, that she thought she heard them; and she retraced her steps, so swiftly--so gladly, the very pain and exhaustion were unfelt. She wrote for half an hour intently--eagerly; though that which she wrote she knew not herself, and never could recall. She took from the secret drawer of her desk (that secret drawer which, when Percy had so laughingly showed her the secret of its spring, telling her nobody but himself knew it, she little thought she should have occasion so to use), some bank notes, of two, three, and five pounds each, making the fifteen she had so carefully hoarded, and placed with them the two she had found. As she did so, she discovered that two had clung so closely together that the sum was five pounds more than she wanted. Still, as acting under the influence of some spell, she carelessly put one aside, sealed up the packet to Edward, inclosed it in her uncle's to Sir Edward Manly, and dispatched it full four hours before the hour Mr. Hamilton had named. It was gone; and she sat down to breathe. Some impulse, never experienced before, urged her, instead of destroying Edward's desperate letter, as she had done similar appeals, to retain it in a blank envelop in that same secret drawer. As she tried to rouse herself from a sort of stupor which was strangely creeping over her, her eye caught the five pound note which she had not had occasion to use, and a thought of such overwhelming wretchedness rushed upon her, as effectually, for the moment, to disperse that stupor, and prostrate her in an agony of supplication before her God.