"Look, look, Prevost!" cried Lord H----, after they had gazed during one or two minutes in silence; "the wind is drifting away the smoke; I can see the top of your house; it is safe as yet--and will be safe," he added, "for the wind sets somewhat away from it." "Not enough," said Mr. Prevost, in a dull, gloomy tone. "The slightest change, and it is gone. The house I care not for; the barns, the crops, are nothing. They can be replaced, or I could do without them; but there are things within that house, my lord, I cannot do without." "Do you not think we can reach it?" asked Lord H----. "If we were to push our horses into the stream there, we might follow its course up, as it seems broad and shallow, and the trees recede from the banks. Are there any deep spots in its course?" "None, massa," replied the negro. "Let us try, at all events," exclaimed Lord H----, turning his horse's head; "we can but come back again, if we find the heat and smoke too much for us." "My daughter!" ejaculated Mr. Prevost, in a tone of deep, strong feeling; "my daughter, Lord H----!" The young nobleman was silent. The stories he had heard that day, and many that he had heard before, of persons getting entangled in burning forests, and never being able to escape--which, while, in the first enthusiasm of the moment, he thought only of himself and of Mr. Prevost, had seemed to him but visions, wild chimeras--assumed a terrible reality, as soon as the name of Edith was mentioned; and he would have shuddered to see the proposal adopted, which he had made only the moment before. He was silent, then; and Mr. Prevost was the first who spoke. "I must go," he said, with gloomy earnestness, after some brief consideration--"I must go, let what will betide."