'The yacht is said to have been sunk off the Maese; people at Maeseland-Sluys or Rotterdam may know something about it. Get leave, go there and inquire, you will be useless here, my dear Goring, and a burden to yourself.' 'Right, I thank you,' he exclaimed, starting up; 'it is a good suggestion.' 'Is not anything better than sitting still a prey to wretchedness and one's miserable thoughts?' she said, feelingly, as she referred, perhaps, to some time or passages in her own past life. Goring resolved to take measures for trying his too probably useless and hopeless search at once. He promised faithfully to write to Laura Dalton informing her of his progress, and of every fragment of intelligence he could pick up--telegraphing to her in the first place. He pressed her hand, kissed her on the forehead, and in another minute was in his saddle, and galloping back to Aldershot at a break-neck speed--at a rate which would certainly have made his nag remonstrate had it possessed the gift of speech. He had wealth enough certainly to satisfy all the requirements--the wishes of Sir Ranald Cheyne; but what did it avail him now? It would neither restore the dead nor his own peace of mind. And now he could but do, as he had done a hundred times before, softly open the clasp of her engagement ring--her brother Ellon's ring--and gaze upon her features, and the tiny lock of hair, while his heart was wrung within him. He dashed off his application for leave, and had it at once despatched. He commanded the inlying piquet that night, and, like an automaton, had to go through the formula of parading it in line with forage caps, great-coats, and side arms, and seeing the camp patrolled between retreat and half an hour after the first post of tattoo. Never would he forget the gloom of that few hours' duty, which seemed to be done, not by himself, but some one else. He had a curious and perplexing sense of a dual existence. Would leave be refused him? That was not to be thought of. He could not rest in his hut alone. Nearly all that night he wandered about the silent camp like an evil or unquiet spirit, challenged again and again by great-coated sentinels, who marvelled whether this officer who passed their posts so often, and to all appearance so aimlessly, was demented or not; and so, for hours and hours of a gloomy and inclement night, he roved about, and heard the wind swaying the tops of the trees. He shivered, and tried to collect his thoughts, but seemed to have none to collect. He tried to reason with himself, but, whatever idea suggested itself, one was always uppermost--Alison drowned, Alison in the cruel and merciless sea. 'I must get out of this place, do something, pull myself together, or I shall go mad,' he muttered. Was he dreaming? was all this sorrow a vision of the night that would pass away?