The entire camp was speedily searched; not a trace could be found of the lost one. She could neither have gone nor been taken to the front, as the snow lay there pure as it had fallen, untrodden and unsullied by footsteps. To the rear then only could she be looked for. Such was the hasty report made to the unhappy father by brigadier Shelton, Audley, and other officers who crowded about him. The ladies were full of compassion and a terror that was not quite unselfish. What had happened? If she had vanished thus mysteriously, whose fate might be next? They trembled in the frosty morning wind as they gazed at each other; but Mabel's beautiful face, by the terrible and haggard misery of its expression, inspired them all with sympathy, and they grouped about her like a covey of frightened doves. Like Denzil, she felt as if half her life--half herself, had suddenly passed away. A looker-on might have thought that the death-warrant of all had been written in an instant, for Denzil, Waller, Audley, Mabel, and poor General Trecarrel stared at each other in blank horror and amazement. Death by the sword, the lance, and bullet; death by cold, starvation, fire, sack, slaughter, and every horror incident to such a retreat, had been, and were even now, close around them; but what unthought-of personal calamity was this? Breathlessly, and almost void of all power of volition, father and child gazed at each other. Their eyes seemed to say "Where is my daughter?" "Where is my sister?" But who was to explain this terrible mystery? Nine ladies, we have said, had crowded together in that small tent, sleeping closely side by side for warmth; and the eight remaining admitted that they had slept soundly in the heavy slumber that comes of intense weariness and keen anxiety. Denzil, in his half-dreamy doze outside the tent, had been conscious of soldiers hovering near it, but thought they were simply seeking for food or fuel. Happy, thoughtless, heedless Rose, with all her flirting and pretty coquettish ways--where was she now? Dead, butchered, or dying in misery amid the snow, or a captive; and, if so, in whose hands? A captive kept for worse than death, too probably! It was an episode that was maddening to her sister; to her old father, who loved her so tenderly; to Denzil, who doted on her shadow, and whose heart was full of the memory of that happy day by the Lake of Istaliff; to Waller; and all who had known and liked her, or laughed and danced with her in the happy time that was past. "Oh, God!" murmured the poor General, half audibly, as he raised his eyes and tremulous hands upwards; "give my child back to me, or take me to her! Lord, Lord, let me not go mad!" he added piteously. "To find her lying dead would be better than to be thus ignorant of her fate--of her sufferings--of her _end_!" Life seemed to die out of his heart; yet he breathed and lived, and had speech and hearing left.