Henry after all their engagements; for when it came to the point with Henry, his soul was found to have so many good works on her side of the account, that the scores on the Infernal tally were altogether cancelled by them. Whilst Count Ernst was weaving in romantic dreams a feeble shadow of hope for deliverance from his captivity, and for a few moments in the midst of them forgetting his dejection and misery, his returning servants brought the Countess tidings that their master had vanished from the camp, and none knew what had become of him. Some supposed that he had been the prey of snakes or dragons; others that a pestilential blast of wind had met him in the Syrian desert, and killed him; others that he had been robbed and murdered, or taken captive, by some plundering troop of Arabs. In one point all agreed: That he was to be held _pro mortuo_, dead in law, and that the Countess was entirely relieved and enfranchised from her matrimonial engagements. But to the Countess herself, a secret foreboding still whispered that her lord was alive notwithstanding. Nor did she by any means repress this thought, which so solaced her heart; for hope is always the stoutest stay of the afflicted, and the sweetest dream of life. To maintain it, she secretly equipped a trusty servant, and sent him out for tidings, over sea into the Holy Land. Like the raven from the Ark, this scout flew to and fro upon the waters, and was no more heard of. Then she sent another forth; who returned after several years' cruising over sea and land; but no olive-leaf of hope was in his bill. Nevertheless the steadfast lady doubted not in the least that she should yet meet her lord in the land of the living: for she had a firm persuasion that so tender and true a husband could not possibly have left the world without in the catastrophe remembering his wife and little children at home, and giving them some token of his death. Now, since the Count's departure, there had nothing happened in the Castle; neither in the armoury by rattling of the harness, nor in the garret by a rolling joist, nor in the bed-chamber by a faint footstep, or heavy-booted tread. Nor had any nightly moaning chanted its _Naenia_ down from the high battlements of the palace; nor had the baleful bird Kreideweiss ever issued its lugubrious death-summons. In the absence of all these signs of evil omen, she inferred by the principles of female common-sense philosophy, which even in our own times are by no means fallen into such desuetude among the fair sex, as Father Aristotle's _Organum_ is among the male, that her much-loved husband was still living; a conclusion, which we know was perfectly correct. The fruitless issue of her first two missions of discovery, the object of which was more important to her than the finding of the Southern Polar Continent is to us, she allowed not in the least to deter her from sending out a third Apostle into All the World.