Reason returned, at length, however. The first thing was to discover some trace whither they had taken her, dead or alive. They must have come from the angles of the roads, that was clear, and probably had gone away by the other side. I examined the trees and bushes with anxious care, and in one part, where they were not very thick, some of the branches seemed bent back, and one twig I perceived was broken. A step or two farther on, a large old tree stood prominently forward, and on its rugged bark near the root was a small fragment of cotton stuff, in colour resembling that in which the woman Jenny had been dressed. This was the way they had dragged them, I concluded, and I went on with steps which seemed sadly slow to the impatience of my spirit. But I was too much alive to the necessity of watching the most minute circumstances, if I would discover any trace of Bessy, to hurry rashly on. At length I came to a place covered thickly with tender wild plants, about the height of my knee, and there I could clearly perceive, by the crushed stems and leaves, that a number of persons must have passed. But here, too, the troop seemed to have separated. The shrubs were beaten down to the left, but very much more to the right, and the party who had taken the latter course seemed to have bent their steps in a direction almost back again. After a moment's hesitation, I took the right-hand track, and found traces of the band for a considerable distance. At length they ceased, or, at all events, my eyes could detect them no longer. The party seemed, in fact, to have separated, each man pursuing a course by himself; and I stood anxious and confounded, not knowing which way to take. I cannot describe the pain of that moment; and now that it is all over, it is hardly possible to convey to you all the fears, the pangs, the anxieties, that pressed upon my mind and overloaded my heart. The scene of blood and horror which I had witnessed at the house of Mr. Travis, the blood dabbled bodies of the two lovely girls who had been torn from their beds and gashed to death with hatchet-wounds, the infant with its brains dashed out upon the floor, were all present to my mind at that moment, and all connected themselves with the thought of her I loved, and seemed only to illustrate the fate of Bessy Davenport! I felt as if I should go mad; but there was an eagerness, a fierceness, pervading the wild, tumultuous sensations within me--a spirit, good or evil, which seemed to cry eternally, "Find her! find her, dead or alive! and take vengeance on her murderers, if thine own life be the sacrifice!" I could not consider accurately, or scan earnestly, which was the way the larger or less bodies had taken; but after a moment of confused and doubtful pause, I plunged headlong amongst the bushes, forcing my way through the tangled laurels, as they are here called, till I came to a more open space, where older trees rose out of the turf with very little undergrowth.