And oh! as the dreadful story of the loss of the Mercury, with all but one on board, spread over the land, how many homes were darkened, how many hearts made desolate. The awful intelligence, traveling slowly through cities, towns, and villages, at length reached Eastville, reached the Headland and Barbara Brande. And upon that home the news fell like a thunderbolt, smiting it to ruin! For all was gone!—ship and cargo and crew!—father, brother, and lover! All gone at a stroke! All lost, except this Mr. Levering whom no one knew, but whom Lord Montressor had risked his life to save! CHAPTER XIV. BARBARA BRANDE. “Go when the hunter’s hand hath wrung From forest caves her shrieking young, And calm the lonely lioness, But sooth not, mock not my distress!”—_Byron._ We left the beautiful Estelle a fugitive from love over the wide world. We left Lord Montressor anxiously seeking some clue by which to trace her course. We bade adieu to the “Island King” and “Princess,” leaving them together in their insulated kingdom. We parted company with Julius Levering at the moment that he disappeared from the deck of the ship. And finally we abandoned the poor, wounded, young lioness, Barbara Brande, in the hour of her utmost need, when every earthly stay and support was stricken from her at one blow. We return first to Barbara. She was of a stronger, firmer, more resolute and courageous nature than any woman, or than most men. Yet when the blow fell—the blow that deprived her at once of father, brother, lover, living,—all in an instant, she dropped beneath it, sunk as it were smitten to the earth! I have seen a Titanic forest tree struck with lighting before my window—seen it suddenly by a shaft from Heaven, rived, branch, and trunk, and root, from sky to earth! So fell the thunderbolt of fate upon her! riving, rending, scathing, brain and heart and frame! and dropped under it, prostrate. But she was strong and could not die—she was a human soul and could not lie prostrate and immovable forever, as the thunder-stricken tree laid! The energetic spirit soon struggled to free itself from the serpent coils of pain and death, and longed to hurl itself amid some violent, some tempestuous, terrible action, in which the sense of anguish might be lost. She conquered the agony—she surmounted it as we do every thing in this world! Yes, she surmounted it; but the world was changed, or she was! Life never seemed the same to her again. All seemed dull, flat, spiritless. She was weary of the careless round of days and nights; weary of the monotonous rising and setting of the sun; weary of the unmeaning, unsympathising faces of men and women; disgusted with the regular recurrence of three meals a day, disgusted with all the eaters and drinkers, workers and sleepers, buyers and sellers in this tedious, insufferable world!