The upshot was so satisfactory, that he felt justified, then and there, in giving considerable commissions for furniture, and in arranging for the hire of such servants as were at least indispensable. He dined early, and had made his return journey, with a heart considerably lightened and braced to content by three o’clock. As he came within sight of the iron gate, he noticed to his surprise a horse tethered amongst the bushes off the road; and still more did he marvel upon nearing it, to see that it was a well-groomed animal and a lady’s, by token of the side-saddle. He dismounted, and leading his own beast over the turf, pushed open the gate, and stood still to reconnoitre. No sign of the owner of the horse was there--no sound of voice or footstep in the green glooms beyond. Uncertain what to do he remained a moment looking this way and that, when suddenly there broke upon his ear a shrill scream of terror. It seemed to issue not twenty paces away, from the direction of the ruined lodge. He dropped the reins and sprang forward. “Here!” he shouted. “What is it? Where are you?” Crying, frenzied words came back to him--a woman’s voice, but inarticulate. Guided by it, however, he ran round by way of a little tangled garden that brought him to the rear of the low building. Nothing was to be seen; but here the voice appealed to him in agony from out the very ground. He fell upon his knees by a sunk heap of rubbish--saw in a moment, and snapped vigorously at two gloved hands, that wavered up at him from a ruin of weeds and broken earth. As he held on, frantically hauling, with his jaw set square, the matted ground shook and crumbled under his feet. He saw what was happening, and, throwing himself back with a mighty effort of resolution, drew slowly from the bowels of the earth, as it were, the collapsed and almost senseless form of a young woman. Then, scarcely might he stagger with her to a place of security, when a rent opened in the spot whence he had struggled, and a great pad of undergrowth went down with a roar and hollow splash of water to ugly depths. Mr. Tuke laid his dainty salvage on the _débris_ of a bench, and looked down upon it all amazed. It presented the form of a girl, of nineteen or twenty perhaps, with a quantity of pale golden hair dragged and tumbled over her very white face, and her dress and velvet spencer--both rich and fashionable--torn and stained in twenty places. Her eyes were closed, and her gloved hands daubed with mud and roots of grass.