Anthelia had not ventured to resume her solitary rambles after her return from Onevote; more especially as she anticipated the period when she should revisit her favourite haunts in the society of one congenial companion whose presence would heighten the magic of their interest, and restore to them that feeling of security which her late adventure had destroyed. But as she was sitting in her library on the morning of her disappearance, she suddenly heard a faint and mournful cry, like the voice of a child in distress. She rose, opened the window, and listened. She heard the sounds more distinctly. They seemed to ascend from that part of the dingle immediately beneath the shrubbery that fringed her windows. It was certainly the cry of a child. She immediately ran through the shrubbery and descended the rocky steps into the dingle, where she found a little boy tied to the stem of a tree, crying and sobbing as if his heart would break. Anthelia easily set him at liberty, and his grief passed away like an April shower. She asked who had the barbarity to treat him in such a manner. He said he could not tell—four strange men on horseback had taken him up on the common where his father lived, and brought him there and tied him to the tree, he could not tell why. Anthelia took his hand and was leading him from the dingle, intending to send him home by Peter Gray, when the men who had made the little child their unconscious decoy broke from their ambush, seized Anthelia, and taking effectual precautions to stifle her cries, placed her on one of their horses, and travelled with great rapidity along narrow and unfrequented ways, till they arrived at a solitary castle on the sea-shore, where they conveyed her to a splendid suite of apartments, and left her in solitude, locking, as they retired, the door of the outer room. She was utterly unable to comprehend the motive of so extraordinary a proceeding, or to form any conjecture as to its probable result. An old woman of a very unmeaning physiognomy shortly after entered, to tender her services; but to all Anthelia’s questions she only replied with a shake of the head, and a smile which she meant to be very consolatory. The old woman retired, and shortly after reappeared with an elegant dinner, which Anthelia dismissed untouched. ‘There is no harm intended you, my sweet lady,’ said the old woman; ‘so pray don’t starve yourself.’ Anthelia assured her she had no such intention, but had no appetite at that time; but she drank a glass of wine at the old woman’s earnest entreaty.