On a day, a horseman, well-mounted, arrived in Fairhaven, in a state of breathless anxiety and haste. He called for a number of the fishermen of the village, and requested them to fly with him to the Fisher’s Cairn, a mile beyond the village, to give them assistance in searching for the body of Hector Ashley, who, he said, had fallen into the Solway, and was supposed to have perished. Then the fishermen seized their dead drags, and ran with their greatest speed to the place pointed out. On arriving there, they found a number of persons collected, among whom was Robert Ashley, apparently occupied in searching for the body of the drowned youth. The clothes of the boy lay on the top of the cairn, from whence it was supposed and reported that he had been bathing, at that part of the Solway which was full of dangerous eddies, and had perished. The father stood in a state bordering on despair, witnessing the unavailable efforts, on the part of the people, to recover his son. Every exertion was used—the dead drags applied in every direction—and the fatal announcement made, that the body was irrecoverable. The tide was receding, and it was the opinion of the fishermen, that the body must have been carried, by the eddies, into some of the deep clefts of the rock, from which it was, in all likelihood, impossible to extricate it. The people gradually disappeared, with the exception of one or two, who undertook to wait the receding of the tide; and Robert Ashley, the disconsolate parent, was conveyed home, in a state of insensibility, to witness the second grief of a mother wailing for the loss of her only child. As the carriage which conveyed Ashley home passed through the village, Mary Lee was sitting, in her usual melancholy mood, at her father’s door. On observing the crowd, she suddenly started up, and, with a loud laugh, pointed to Ashley, and retreated into the house. The circumstance caught the attention of the crowd, and formed a part of the melancholy theme which fate had supplied to the evening gossips of Fairhaven. Some hours afterwards, it was reported that the tide had receded to its utmost extent, and no trace could be found of the lost heir of “The Castle.” The conduct of Mary Lee had given rise to suspicions of her being in some way, connected with the death of Hector Ashley; and an investigation was, by the orders of the father, set about, with the view of ascertaining what grounds there existed for these suspicions. It was, however, clearly ascertained that Mary Lee had not been out of her father’s house for hours preceding the disappearance of the unfortunate boy, and the inquiry was relinquished. No hope was now entertained that any less disastrous fate had befallen him than being drowned, while in the act of bathing, a recreation he had been in the habit of indulging in unknown to his mother, who had enjoined the strictest prohibition against it.