To this the Count readily agreed, and preparations for immediate departure were made. It was with difficulty that Ælia could be persuaded that she must be left behind. But when it was pointed out to her that her presence must inevitably make the progress of the party more slow, and increase their anxieties, she reluctantly gave way. At the last moment an unexpected addition was made to the party in the person of the Saxon prisoner. “My lord,” said the peddler, to whom the young man had communicated his earnest desire to be allowed to go; “it may seem a strange thing for me to say, but you cannot have a better helper in this matter than this young fellow. He is as strong as any horse, and as keen and intelligent a youth as I ever saw. And in this case too his wits will be doubly sharp, and his arm doubly strong, for he worships the very ground that the Lady Carna treads upon.” “Very well,” replied the Count, with a smile, “let him go. After all, it is quite as safe to take a lion about with one, as to leave him at home.” The pet dog was, of course, a valued member of the expedition. CHAPTER XIV. THE PURSUIT. The task of tracing the lost girl was at first easy enough. She and the stranger, who, it now seemed, had been sent to entrap her, had been seen proceeding in the direction mentioned in the message. The neighbourhood of the villa was mostly cultivated ground, and there had been people at work in the fields who had noticed the girl’s well-known figure. Beyond this belt of cultivated country, which might have been about a mile broad, there was only one road which it was possible for her to have taken. Following this, and reaching the hamlet at the further end of which, as we have seen, the abduction had taken place, they still found themselves on the right track. A child had seen two people, one of them, she said, a pretty lady, pass by on the morning of the day before. The lady had smiled, and said a few words to her in her own language, and had given her a sweetmeat. Further on the traces of what they were looking for became still more evident. There were marks of struggle on the ground, for Carna, as we have seen, had not suffered herself to be taken without resistance; a button was found on the ground, which the peddler at once identified as one of his own selling. And a little off the path, the tree was found to which the dog had been tied, with the fragment of string still attached to it. Curiously enough, no traces of the great dog could be found.