"Oh, he will return--he will return!--there is no fear, sir," replied the younger woman. "He is anxious enough, poor fellow, no doubt; but he will soon return, I am sure." "You had better go away, young gentleman--you had better go away," cried the old woman, chiming in, with a more peremptory tone; "they are wild people in these parts, and you can do no good by staying here, and may do harm. You had better go away, I say, for this is no place for you--nor for me either," she added, in a lower tone. "I was never born for all this." I have attempted to shew before, that the mind of Morley Ernstein was not very susceptible of fear; and though there was certainly a sort of menace in the tone of the old woman, his curiosity was but the more excited, and he replied, without hesitation--"Oh, dear, no! You had better let me go and look for him. It is the way of this world, where a man who has lost one thing must always go and help his neighbour who has lost something else." "I think you are laughing at us," said the younger woman, gravely; "and I tell you, too, I wish you would go, sir. It may be better for you if you do. If you have really lost anything, and any one here has found it, it shall be sent back to you." "I am not laughing at you, my good lady," replied Morley; "what I have lost is my way, and I meant that I was going to call your husband back to his, when I have lost my own. Thus it was myself I was laughing at, if at any one. But the truth is, having, as I said, lost my way, I am about to ask you for shelter here during the night, as I must have, by the best calculation I can make, some sixteen or seventeen miles, if not more, to ride to my own home." "Shelter here!" cried the old woman, looking at him eagerly, and even sternly--"what sort of shelter do you expect here, young man? Is this a place to seek shelter, or are we people that can give it?" "I really do not know," answered Morley Ernstein. "I certainly thought that such a thing was possible, or I should not have asked it; there seems a cottage there----" Before the old woman could reply, there came the sound of a horse's feet approaching at a quick pace, and the boy's mother, catching him up in her arms, darted away like lightning towards the spot where she had first been standing when met by Morley Ernstein. She seemed to reach it before the horseman, and Morley could just hear her exclaim--"He is safe, Harry--he is safe!--Wait till I come down to you!--Do not come on, I have something to say." The horse apparently paused; for two or three minutes no other sound was heard from that quarter; and Morley would have been left to pursue, uninterrupted, his meditations upon the somewhat peculiar position in which he found himself placed, had not the old woman who stood beside him urged him somewhat eagerly to mount his horse and ride away.