"Where hae ye been, Peter?" said she, eagerly; "hae ye seen naething o' him?" "Naething! naething!" replied he; "is he no cast up yet?" And, with a melancholy glance, his eyes sought an answer in the deserted chair. His lips quivered, his tongue faltered. "Gude forgie me!" said he; "and such a day for even an enemy to be out in! I've been up and doun every way that I can think on, but not a living creature has seen or heard tell o' him. Ye'll excuse me, neebors," he added, leaving the house; "I must awa again, for I canna rest." "I ken by mysel', friends," said Adam Bell, a decent-looking Northumbrian, "that a faither's heart is as sensitive as the apple o' his e'e; and I think we would show a want o' natural sympathy and respect for our worthy neighbour, if we didna every one get his foot into the stirrup without loss o' time, and assist him in his search. For, in my rough, country way o' thinking, it must be something particularly out o' the common that would tempt Thomas to be amissing. Indeed, I needna say _tempt_, for there could be no inclination in the way. And our hills," he concluded, in a lower tone, "are not ower chancy in other respects, besides the breaking up o' the storm." "Oh!" said Mrs. Elliot, wringing her hands, "I have had the coming o' this about me for days and days. My head was growing dizzy with happiness, but thoughts came stealing upon me like ghosts, and I felt a lonely soughing about my heart, without being able to tell the cause; but the cause is come at last! And my dear Thomas--the very pride and staff o' my life--is lost!--lost to me for ever!" "I ken, Mrs. Elliot," replied the Northumbrian, "it is an easy matter to say compose yourself, for them that dinna ken what it is to feel. But, at the same time, in our plain, country way o' thinking, we are always ready to believe the worst. I've often heard my father say, and I've as often remarked it myself, that, before anything happens to a body, there is _a something_ comes ower them, like a cloud before the face o' the sun; a sort o' dumb whispering about the breast from the other world. And though I trust there is naething o' the kind in your case, yet, as you observe, when I find myself growing dizzy, as it were, with happiness, it makes good a saying o' my mother's, poor body! 'Bairns, bairns,' she used to say, 'there is ower muckle singing in your heads to-night; we will have a shower before bedtime.' And I never, in my born days, saw it fail." At any other period, Mr. Bell's dissertation on presentiments would have been found a fitting text on which to hang all the dreams, wraiths, warnings, and marvellous circumstances, that had been handed down to the company from the days of their grandfathers; but, in the present instance, they were too much occupied in consultation regarding the different routes to be taken in their search.