While we had been speaking, a little crowd had gathered round Mr. Byles and myself; for I must remark that nobody in the United States appears to comprehend that any other person can have private business with which he has nothing to do; and you must lock your door very tight, if you would not have others come and listen to what you have to say. One of the gentlemen who was standing by here joined in our conversation saying,-- "Colonel Halliday, I am sorry to tell you, did not bring in Miss Davenport. I saw him just as he came in about an hour ago. He had with him two negroes, whom he had captured, and three young ladies, whom he had brought from houses along the road--Miss Corwin and the two Miss Joneses; but I know Miss Davenport was not there, for I stopped and talked to them for a minute." Here at once was knocked away every frail prop and support on which I had built my hopes and expectations. Hope was indeed not destroyed; for hope is immortal, reaching to the grave and beyond the grave. Yet there was no resting-place for her footsteps; a light, pale and faint though not extinguished, flitted, wandering like an _ignis fatuus_, over a wild, an insecure ground, where there was no path to guide, no solid basis to support. Where was she? What had become of her? Who could tell? The glimmering light rested principally upon one point alone. No corpse had been found in the wood: no trace of the sanguinary acts which had left terrible witnesses behind them wherever they had been perpetrated. But a faint hope, though not so full of temporary distress, is, perhaps, more agitating, more engrossing than a painful certainty. Billy Byles and the gentleman who had just spoken continued to converse for some minutes, without my hearing or attending to anything that passed between them. I believe that Louisa Thornton spoke to me from the balcony above; but I fear I did not answer her. Standing with my eyes fixed on the ground, and my thoughts bitterly preoccupied, I saw, I heard nothing, and it was not till Mr. Byles touched my arm, saying,--"That is a good thought; let us try it," that I woke from this dreadful reverie. "What is?" I asked; "I did not hear." "Why," answered Billy Byles, "Captain Wilson proposes we should go down to the old block-house, erected in revolutionary times to defend the river, and where the prisoners are confined, and examine them as to what became of Miss Bessy. Those we took at Doctor Blunt's must be the same who passed over the ground where you left her; and the devils will tell at the first question, for they have all got a looseness of tongue which prevents them from having any concealments. That is the difference between an Irishman and a negro; the one, pretending to tell all, tells nothing, for fear he should hurt himself or his hundred-and-fiftieth cousin; the other tells everything, without caring whether he implicates his own life or that of a dozen more."