Marian was gone, lost, swept away by the waves! that was the thought that wrung from him a cry of fierce agony, piercing through all the discord of the storm, as he ran up and down the shore, hoping nothing, expecting nothing, yet totally unable to tear himself from the fatal spot. And so he wildly walked and raved, until his garments were drenched through with the rain; until the storm exhausted its fury and subsided; until the changing atmosphere, the still, severe cold, froze all his clothing stiff around him; so he walked, groaning and crying and calling despairingly upon the name of Marian, until the night waned and the morning dawned, and the eastern horizon grew golden, then crimson, then fiery with the coming sun. The sky was clear, the waters calm, the sands bare and glistening in the early sunbeams; no vestige of the storm or of the bloody outrage of the night remained--all was peace and beauty. In the distance was a single snow-white sail, floating swan-like on the bosom of the blue waters. All around was beauty and peace, yet from the young man's tortured bosom peace had fled, and remorse, vulture-like, had struck its talons deep into his heart. He called himself a murderer, the destroyer of Marian; he said it was his selfishness, his willfulness, his treachery, that had exposed her to this danger, and brought her to this fate! Some outlaw, some waterman, or fugitive negro had robbed and murdered her. Marian usually wore a very valuable watch; probably, also, she had money about her person--enough to have tempted the cupidity of some lawless wretch. He shrank in horror from pursuing conjecture--it was worse than torture, worse than madness to him. Oh, blindness and frenzy; why had he not thought of these dangers so likely to beset her solitary path? Why had he so recklessly exposed her to them? Vain questions, alas! vain as was his self-reproach, his anguish and despair! CHAPTER XXVII. THE MISSING MARIAN. In the meantime, how had the morning broken upon Dell-Delight? How upon Luckenough? and how at Old Field Cottage?