"Oh, quite safe," answered the sheriff. "Don't you see we have as many blacks as whites here? This bad spirit is by no means general. Had it been so, we might have fared worse; though it has been bad enough, God knows, as it is." Zed led away my horse; and, being left nearly alone with the sheriff, I explained to him my anxiety about Bessy; told him the cause I had to suppose that she had been found in the wood by Colonel Halliday, and carried to some place of safety; and asked if he had seen that gentleman in the town. "Oh, yes, he was here a little while ago," answered the sheriff. "He brought in several ladies with him, but I really did not notice who they were. He took them to the inn, I think, and you had better see if you can find Miss Davenport there." CHAPTER XXVIII. I know no more anxious, more irritating, more painful occupation in the world than that of seeking (when we are apprehensive and doubtful of the fate of one we love) amongst a great, confused and pre-occupied crowd, for some traces of the lost one. It has been my fate twice in life to aid in the search for a strayed child; and the agony of the father communicated itself, in part at least, to me, and gave me the power of feeling a portion of all the torture which imagination inflicted upon him at that moment. Every one we speak to seems so selfish, so volatile, so obdurate, that we can hardly believe there is anything like feeling or sympathy in the human breast; when, perhaps, scanned accurately, our own sensations would be found to be selfish, and our own accusations return upon our own head. Who could tell, in that mixed crowd, what were the motives, what the feelings, what the doubt and dread, which created the sort of fierce anxiety in my heart? Who could see in my look, or detect in my voice, more than the most minute portion of that anxiety? Yet, I felt a very unreasonable degree of anger and irritation at the utter indifference of every one around me to all that was going on within my breast. I forced my way, however, onward towards the door of the inn; but before I reached it, a fresh little party entered in the town, and cut across my path, presenting that strange mixture of the ludicrous and the horrible, which is, perhaps, more dreadful than the purely tragic.