"When my father was a young man of three and twenty, he was one day in August strolling with his gun through this wood. When he had surmounted the ascent, and come out in this dell, a thunderstorm that had long threatened burst with great fury and violence on his head, and the rain descended in floods. He at once bethought him of this cave, and in far shorter time than we took, Ellen, made across the dell, climbed the rocks, and took advantage of its welcome shelter. Seated on the ground with his gun near him he listened to the grand storm. The vivid lightning lit up the cavern every moment, and played around it; the bellowing thunder crashes shook the very ground, echoing from rock to hill; and the rain descended in sheets. For two hours the storm rolled on, and kept him prisoner; at last the peals waxed fainter--the lightnings less bright--and the storm wore gradually away, now and then only a faint after-clap grumbled in the distance--the rain still fell heavily, and the torrent came down in high flood, carrying trees and rocks with it. The deafening roar of the cascade drowned the distant thunder--the last dying voice of the subsiding storm, the rain lessened--then ceased altogether, and the sun shone out, and stained a rainbow on the dark cloud. My father took up his gun, and, advancing to the mouth of the cave, looked out; what was his surprise to see a young lady, handsomely dressed, but drenched by the rain, vainly attempting to find a passage across the roaring torrent! At last she stood on one of those two rocks which narrow the flood, and for a moment hesitated whether to risk the leap or not. 'Lady, try it not,' cried my father; but he spoke too late, she sprung, but miscalculating the breadth, her foot slipped from the rock she barely reached, and flinging up her arms, uttering at the same time a wild scream, she fell back into the turbid waters. To leap down from the cave, and plunge in after the sinking maiden was a work of an instant; and, fortunate in rescuing her from the wild current, a task which taxed my father's whole strength, he bore the fainting girl, with her fair hair streaming with water, to this cave, where he soon had the joy of seeing her return to consciousness, and he did not leave his charge till he saw her able to walk home. He found out that the lady he had saved from a watery grave was Edith Carr, an orphan and only daughter, and heiress to Hugh Carr of Cessford; she was the ward of her uncle William, being a minor. Unhappily a deadly feud existed between the Carrs and De Veres, ever since one of my ancestors carried off the lady of an old warrior of the Carrs' line, and secreted her in the tower, or Peel of Cessford. Her husband finding her out, brutally murdered his faithless spouse, and was in turn assassinated by my ancestor. Proceeding as near the mansion as he dared, my father left his charge, after having first planned a meeting in this cave. Edith