But hour after hour went by, and neither Frank Kennedy nor the boy Harry returned. The night approached. Parties of searchers anxiously beat the woods and patrolled the cliffs. For long they found nothing, but at last a boat's crew, landing perilously at the foot of the precipices, came upon the body of the excise officer, a sword-cut in his head, lying half in and half out of the water. He had been flung from the cliffs above. Frank Kennedy was dead--as to that there was no question. But what had become of the child, Harry Bertram? That--no one could answer. Not a trace of him was to be found. The smuggler's ship still burned fiercely, but Dirk Hatteraick and his men had completely vanished. Some one suggested the gipsies, whereupon the Laird mounted the first horse he came across and rode furiously to the huts of Derncleugh. Bursting in a door, he found on the ruined hearth of the house that had once sheltered Meg Merrilies, a fire still smouldering. But there, too, Godfrey Bertram discovered nothing and no one. While he remained on the spot, dazed and uncertain, looking at the blackened hearthstone, his old servant entered hastily to bid him return at once to Ellangowan. His wife had been taken dangerously ill. Godfrey spurred as fast as horse would carry him, but Death had gone faster, and had arrived before him. When he reached the gate, the Lady of Ellangowan was dead, leaving him with a little baby girl less than an hour old. The shock of Kennedy's murder and her own little Harry's loss had killed her. INTERLUDE OF INTERROGATION The melancholy conclusion of the first _Guy Mannering_ tale kept the children quieter than usual. I think they regretted a little the gallant opening of _Waverley_, but as ever they were full of questions. "And all that happened here, in our Galloway?" began Sweetheart, looking about her at the hills of dark heather and the sparkling Solway sands, from which the storm-clouds were just beginning to lift. "Yes," I answered her, "though it is doubtful if Scott ever _was_ in Galloway. But he had seen Criffel across from Dumfries-shire, and the castle of Ellangowan is certainly described from the ruins of Caerlaverock, opposite New Abbey. Besides, had he not good old Joseph Train, the Castle Douglas exciseman, to tell him everything--than whom no man knew Galloway better?" "Did gipsies really steal children?" said Maid Margaret, with some apprehension. She was somewhat anxious, for an affirmative answer might interfere with certain wide operations in blackberrying which she was planning. "Sometimes they did," I answered, "but not nearly so often as they were blamed for. They had usually enough mouths of their own to feed. So, unless they were sure of a ransom, or perhaps occasionally for the sake of revenge, gipsies very seldom were guilty of kidnapping."