But that strong unseen Hand, so often stretched out in our great extremities, was stretched out now, although only for the saving of one little girl. It guided the boy to the spot where the poor little floundering bundle rose to the surface, helped him to play the hero, and to snatch her from those yawning watery jaws, that would fain have swallowed her—she was shudderingly near to her end, but after a time he grasped her tightly, and drew her to him.

“Take her to the house, to the Owl’s Nest,” came the command, with the tone of authority, from the depths of Madame Giche’s black hood.

“I thought of taking her home,” returned Oscar without ceremony.

“Yes, young people think a great many wrong thoughts; but if you take her to the house, you’ll be glad in an hour’s time you did an old woman’s bidding,” was the decisive reply.

Oscar caught up the insensible girl in his arms in moody silence; truth to tell, he would be glad to get her into something dry and warm; she certainly did look death-like.

“Do you know the short cut to the house?” inquired Madame Giche.

“Yes, thank you; I know.”

“Can you carry her, or shall Phil help you?”

Then Madame Giche’s party turned and went homeward by a less direct road, because of her chair, and Black Hole was again deserted. Madame Giche, however, despatched Phil to run forward with her message to the servants, that the child was to be taken in and attended to; her nieces propelling her along at a brisk canter, because she wished to be herself early on the spot. So Phil and Oscar mounted the north terrace together. Phil gave the alarm, the servants flocked out, and Long, Madame’s own maid, took possession of Inna, and bore her away to her own little room, next to her mistress’s bedchamber, on the first floor. Of course, Oscar loitered about outside, on the terrace, like a lad in a book, to wait for tidings; he was there when Madame arrived, and assisted her up the steps, he on one side, Phil on the other, because a trembling fit, brought on by the shock, was upon her. A frail little mite of a gentlewoman was she between the two sturdy lads, her nieces, like meek little handmaids, following behind them.

And for once the boy obeyed, and submitted to be so equipped, Phil taking him under his especial care and leading the way to his bedroom. Anon, when he descended the stairs, longing for tidings of Inna, Phil grinning slily behind him at his second self, out stepped Long from somewhere, and told him the little lady had come out of her swoon, and they had given her something comforting, and tucked her up in bed. “Madame Giche’s compliments to Dr. Willett, and they would take good care of her till to-morrow.” Then Phil appeared with a cup of steaming coffee, which Long made him drink before he left; then he set forth homeward.

“And so you’re none the worse for your wetting, my dear?” said her hostess, drawing her to her, and kissing her, after the little girl had gone up to her, as she sat by the log fire, and timidly said—

“Good morning, Madame Giche. Thank you for being so good to me.”

The child assured her that she was none the worse, her rosy face testifying to the same.

“Then, dear, don’t think about thanks. You are quite a pleasant surprise visitor to us—lonely people; to me and my two little shy nieces, who will be the better for having a little girl friend. Let me introduce you; they’re on the very tip-toe of waiting.”

“Now see, dear, it’s pouring with rain. Do you think you could be happy as our guest to-day, or must I send you home in the carriage?” questioned Madame Giche.

They were in what was called the tapestried chamber, a room lined with needlework, done by dead fingers of long ago: those of some of the ladies whose portraits Inna was to see by-and-by in the grand staircase, and the gallery running round the hall.

“I should like—what would you like me to do, ma’am?” faltered Inna.

“We should much like you to stay, dear,” returned Madame Giche, still holding her hand.

“Then, thank you, I should like to stay.”

So it was decided, and Olive and Sybil, the twin sisters, drew away their guest to look at pretty foreign ornaments, in profusion all about the room.

This was in the afternoon, after they had lunched with Madame Giche in the tapestried room, and had wandered away up into the picture-gallery, to look at some of the pictures.

“There, that is grand-auntie; isn’t it like? That was done abroad,” said Sybil, who was the talker. Olive was sedate and somewhat silent.

There was no mistaking the sweet aged face peering down at them from the canvas, and Inna said so.

A dark, handsome, wilful young face had Madame Giche’s son, as seen in his portrait—a young man just on the threshold of manhood. Inna stood to gaze at it, wondering what it was stirring the depths of her sensitive little heart, and filling it with a lingering pain.

“Grand-auntie says these two pictures have no right here, and calls them alien pictures among aliens, because the house isn’t ours and the pictures don’t rightly belong here; but she took her son’s portrait with her in all her travels, and her own was done abroad, and of course she brought them here.”

“His wife wrote the letter telling of his death, and that he asked grand-auntie to forgive him—and that was all. She has never been able to find the wife nor the son.”

“’Tis sad,” sighed Inna; “because she might have been so fond of the son.”

“Papa’s portrait is at Wyvern Court—that’s grand-auntie’s own place, you know. Grand-auntie says we shall be twin heiresses by-and-by.”

“Dead; and mamma too,” said grave-browed Olive.

“Do you like living at the farm with your uncle?” inquired sprightly Sybil.

“Yes; only I haven’t been there long—and—and a grand-uncle isn’t like a grand-auntie,” said Inna.

“And Dr. Willett hasn’t got a broken heart,” returned Sybil; “I suppose doctors don’t have broken hearts.”

Well, the three dined in state at six with Madame Giche; the children were having a rather free-and-easy time of it, for their governess, Miss Gordon, was away nursing somebody ill, and so they did very much as they listed, so long as they did not weary their aged relative.

“Oh! I wish you were,” said Inna.

“Why?” gruffly.

“Because you ought; because ’tis right.”

“Oh, bother right! I’m not going; in fact, I can’t. Dick Gregory’s coming over; there’s to be steam threshing in the yard, no end of fun, and I can’t disappoint him. Besides, it can’t be far wrong; doing it under uncle’s very nose;” and away went the boy, out of sight of his cousin’s reproachful eyes.

“I know he’s to be a farmer, but there, even farmers mustn’t be blockheads of dunces, as Oscar’ll be if he don’t alter,” said Mrs. Grant.

“To be a farmer?” inquired Inna.

“Yes, dearie, that’s why his uncle is keeping on the farm. He talked of selling or letting it years ago, when it fell to him by heirship, but he didn’t, but kept it on and on; and when his brother’s orphan came to him, he said he’d keep it for him, if I didn’t mind seeing to it a few years longer; and I said I didn’t, being a farmer’s daughter. I think I’ve made a better farmer than—than your uncle,” laughed the good woman. “So the farm is for Master Oscar.”

“So Oscar is to be a farmer,” mused the little girl, hearkening for his coming, as she sat by the wood fire, while Mrs. Grant went presently to attend to the two hard-working doctors, just come in.

In he came at last.

“Yes, I have; and now I am going at once to make it straight with the doctor,” he peeped into the kitchen to say to Inna. “That’s a step in the right direction, you must confess;” and was gone.

The going in to make confession of his neglect of his lessons by Oscar, that night, was like a very firstfruits to loving little Inna, in her endeavour to influence this big, strong, wilful cousin for good. Nay, she shamed him into industry and painstaking by her own application to studies, going to and from the Owl’s Nest, “like clockwork, you little grinder!” as the boy expressed it, making his awkward admission to her on Christmas Eve, the two wreathing the house with holly and evergreens. This was something which Carlo and Smut the black cat thought it their duty to look into, to judge from the way they pryingly inspected the monster heap of greenery in the wide passage, where the boy and girl worked, making Inna laugh and laugh again, till her uncle peeped out of his study door to inquire what was the matter.

“Ah! laugh and grow fat.” With this, he went in and shut the door.

“Not at all a speech to address to a lady,” remarked Mr. Barlow, crossing the hall at the moment. “But Christmas is the time for liberties of all sorts and unheard-of requests—have you any of the latter, fair lady?” and the surgeon halted behind her.

“I have one little wish, and ’tis about uncle and his den,” ventured Inna, blushing a little.

“Well, suppose you tell me, and let me be the go-between—no enviable part to play, remember, to put a finger in anybody’s pie, much more in that of a doctor and a young lady combined.”

“May I put a bit of holly in uncle’s den?”

“Make Christmas in the lion’s den, eh, Oscar! Well, I’m off; but let me make sure of my errand. I go to prefer a petition from the lamb to the lion for permission to enter his den with a flag of truce.” In he went into the study.

After that evening the doctor’s study doors were open to Inna once and again; she tapped timidly for permission to go in and make up his fire on the cold evenings which came in with the new year, when snow lay upon the ground, and Mrs. Grant told her that most likely her studious, absorbed uncle was sitting with his fire gone out, and she herself dared not intrude to replenish it.

“Come in, dear,” he would say at such times. “You’ll not disturb me.” And before the winter was over he named her his “Little Salamander;” and once or twice peeped out and called for her when she did not come.

Well, with so many holiday keepers, Oscar dared to join hands, and to take French leave, as he called it, in plotting and planning an expedition to the Tor without asking permission of his uncle. Not that he anticipated a refusal, but just because young people will persist in thinking stolen waters are sweet—sweeter than any other waters. Ah, well! we know what the wise man says about the bread of deceit; it points out much the same moral.

There were sea-fogs which swept up, and made the Tor so dangerous, Mrs. Grant affirmed; but Oscar always said “Fudge!” to this—a pet word of his, as he did on that fair March morning, when not a cloud or an atom of fog was to be seen anywhere, but all was cold and brilliant, as some March mornings are.

“Just the morning for the old Tor,” the lad said decisively: “the views splendid, sea and all.”

“But how about school and your uncle?” inquired Mrs. Grant.

“But suppose we were to wait and ask him?” suggested Inna.

“I can’t wait. Dick Gregory and his sister are coming over. We shall make such a jolly party, and there’ll be more fun to steal a march upon someone:” this was Oscar’s reasoning.

Up, up, still mounting up, they went, putting their best foot before, as their two guides admonished the girls, giving them many a tug and many a pull; and when they were half-way up, down they sat in the sunshine, and ate a lunch picnic, taking sundry sips of cold water from a bottle Oscar insisted on bringing, because he said climbing was such thirsty work in the clear cold air of the old Tor. Well, after this they went mounting up again, sometimes, like spiders, on all fours.

“It does take the breath out of one,” said Dick, tugging at Trapper, who, girl-like, kept slipping back, Oscar doing the same with Inna.

Dick, who was gifted with far-reaching sight, affirmed he could see the sails of the fishing-smacks, but none of the others could; still they all clapped their hands, and sang in a wild chorus:

“I mean to be a sailor,” said Oscar, when the singing ended. Silence reigned on the old Tor, save for the blustering wind, which played havoc with the girls’ hair, and clutched at all their hats.

“Oh, Oscar! and uncle intends you to be a farmer!” cried Inna, her tongue running away with her better judgment, which would have whispered her to think twice before she spoke once. But her heart was stirred with pity for Oscar, and for her uncle, knowing what Mrs. Grant had said about the boy’s future.

“Mrs. Grant told me so; but I don’t know that there was any whispering about it,” returned the little girl.

“Well, she told you what’ll never be. I mean to be a sailor, so there!”

“To be a farmer is no bad berth,” said sensible Dick.

“Oh yes, for them who take to it; but that’s not I. I mean to be a sailor, like my father before me.”

“Oh! but, Oscar, what will uncle say?” cried Inna.

“Oh, he’ll get over it. Every boy has a right to choose his own profession, and he knows it.”

“Yes; but ’tisn’t a right every boy goes in for. I meant to be a farmer, and my father set his heel upon that notion, and said I must be a doctor,” said Dick.

“Well?” and Oscar waited to hear more.

“I shall be a doctor; no good comes of a boy going on trying to go against his father’s way or will.”

“Yes,” was Dick’s retort. “I suppose an uncle would expect a little more yielding of number one to number two.”

“Why?” growled Oscar, not liking Dick’s views of the case.

“Because of gratitude. I suppose gratitude ought to have a voice with a fellow about his father’s wishes; but it ought to have two voices with those of an uncle playing a father’s part.”

“Well, an uncle’s wish ought not to make one wreck one’s life; and that’s what I shall do if I am a farmer.”

“Phew! you’d be more likely to be wrecked as a sailor now,” replied Dick loftily.

“Well, I mean to stand up for my rights,” contended Oscar.

“Better not, if you value your peace of mind. Since I’ve given up youth’s charming dream of farming—ha! how the words rhyme!—I’ve been as happy as a peg-top,” answered Dick.

The girls smiled.

“Oh, come, Willett; little friend there could contradict that, I know,” said Dick. “But we didn’t come up here to discuss our wants and wishes. Suppose we look about a bit, and see the sights. Look, Miss Inna, that jutting rock yonder, by the sea, is Swallow’s Cliff, and behind it is a little bay;” and then he drew her away to look down the Ugly Leap. A dizzy height it was to gaze down from above, with a deep gorge at its foot, in which a stream of water gurgled, said by some to have a connection with Black Hole, the lad told her; over which Inna shuddered and turned away.

But it was something, and it did not lift; instead, it shut them in so that they could not see one another’s faces; and oh! the girls’ teeth chattered with cold. Worse, snow began to fall—blinding snow, which enveloped them quite. Well for them that they had put on fur-lined cloaks and overcoats, but——

“I say, we’re in for it!” cried Dick; that was when they stood deep in snow, and the cold was chilling them to the very bone.

“Don’t you think you could steer us down out of this, Willett? You know the old villain better than I do. We shall freeze!”

And Oscar said, “No; better freeze than lose one’s way, and——” They knew he was thinking of the shepherd lad and the Ugly Leap.

“Still, something must be done,” urged Dick; then the two lads made the shivering girls move and spring up and down, and hoped that the storm would clear. But it did not.

“Well, I’ll make the attempt to go down and get a lantern, and bring back someone,” volunteered Oscar at last. “I don’t mind for myself, but I can’t play guide for——”

“Ay, I know,” agreed Dick; “to be hampered with other people’s lives is a great responsibility. Well, take your own life in your hands and go, and I’d take mine and go with you; but——”

“You stay there with the girls,” growled Oscar, and gripped their hands, as in parting, all the way round.

They let him go a few steps away, and his shadowy form was lost. The girls clung to Dick, too cold, too scared, too much as in a dreadful dream, to cry—ay, too much benumbed. The boy shouted, Oscar responded; once and again shouts were exchanged, then came a scream—a scream so shrill that it seemed to cleave their poor failing hearts in two—and then silence, blank silence, save for the howl of the wind as it whirled the snow. Dick shouted himself hoarse, but there came no answer. Something terrible must have happened to Oscar.

The dead silence that followed, save for the hooting of the storm, was more terrible, if that could be, than Oscar’s scream, for it told of what? They did not say, but their hearts throbbed out what they feared.

“Oh, Dick! what shall we do?” cried the little girls, clinging to him.

He was a boy so strong, so brave—surely he could think of something. Well, he did think of something, but that was after they had shouted “Oscar! Oscar!” till the storm itself seemed the name. This is what he thought of.

“There is nothing to be done but for me to go and look for him.”

It sounded like a miserably forlorn hope, and the girls thought so; for they clung to him, crying, “Oh, Dick, Dick!” and almost unnerved him.

“Yes; but throwing away your life wouldn’t save his if—if it isn’t lost,” faltered fond little Jenny.

“No,” returned her brother; “and, God willing, I don’t mean to throw away my life.”

They were silent for a moment, while the storm raved on. I think they all breathed a sort of wordless prayer, then Dick spoke.

“Now, you girls must stand by each other, and comfort each other; and, whatever you do, don’t sit down and give in to sleep. Good-bye.”

There was no wringing of hands; the three could not bear it with that scream of Oscar ringing in their ears.

Well, down in the village people were shutting doors, closing shutters, and heaping up fires, and saying what a cold snowy ending it was to such a fair day, as they made themselves cosy, little dreaming there were two small wanderers up on the old Tor in the storm. The two children could picture it all, and wondered what was doing at the farm: whether they were in a great fright about them—Mrs. Grant, Dr. Willett, and Mr. Barlow. Jenny thought too of what they were saying and doing at her home, but oh! where was Dick, where was Oscar? How the minutes lengthened into hours in the cold, the weariness, ay, even drowsiness. But they must not yield to sleep—Dick had warned them of this; they knew that sleep up there in that extreme cold meant death. What should they do?

“Oh, Carlo! where are they all? are they coming?” cried Inna, her arms about his neck.

“Thank Heaven!” said Dr. Willett, pressing his snowy little niece close to him.

“Thank Heaven!” muttered Mr. Barlow over Jenny, just such another snowball.

“But where is Dick—where is Oscar?”

“Lost, both lost!” sobbed the two poor little troubled hearts, as they poured out their story.

“Do you take the lantern, Sam,” went on the surgeon to the carter, “and search about for them. Of course, even give the Ugly Leap a call, and make inquiry for them; and when I’ve played the polite man, and seen the doctor well on his way with these young ladies, I’ll join you—two heads are better than one even in the matter of looking up two boys that we’re not sure are lost on a snowy night.”

With this, Sam marched off with the lantern, and Carlo with him, as if he understood the plan of operation, and that the lads were missing, and he must play his part in finding them.

“Better walk, dears; ’twill stir your blood,” said Dr. Willett at starting; and so they did for a time, but before they reached the farm they were glad to be carried, like two small over-done children as they were.

None; nothing; nobody: this was Sam’s three-worded account of his failure—for it was failure—while Carlo hung his head, dropped his tail forlornly, and whined like a dog baffled.

Mr. Gregory looked upon his sleeping children and returned home; the others retired for an hour’s rest before going out to their sick patients. Besides, there were new search parties to be organised. To the Ugly Leap went the doctor again as the day wore on; the dark waters of the gorge were searched, so far as such a mysterious stream could be searched, emerging from the heart of the earth, and only flowing a few yards, it may be, in the light of day, ere it dived away into the darkness and secrecy from which it had come. Ah! there was neither sign nor token of the missing boy, there or elsewhere. Nothing, nowhere—these were the words that went the round of Cherton, with their dreary hopelessness, as the days flowed on, and tidings went here and there of the lost boy, while his description was sent to the police authorities, far and wide.

Inna went daily for lessons to the Owl’s Nest. It was well to get away from the house, Mrs. Grant said, for the child moped and grew pale under the suspense and mystery of what had befallen this strong, wilful, good-natured cousin of hers, whom she had been gathering to her as the brother she had long sighed for. True, Jenny came over to see her, for she too was lonely, with Dick gone back to school; but what could Jenny understand about her heartache?—she with her brother safe at school, while Oscar, Inna’s all but brother, was nobody knew where.

“I wish he hadn’t played truant that day, and I wish I hadn’t let him:” this was the burdened little plaint, making her heart so heavy, and which she ventured to pour out to Mr. Barlow one day.

“Oh, yes. But suppose he is dead, was killed, washed under the Tor by the dark waters of the brook at the Ugly Leap,” sighed the child.

“Oh, well,” was the answer, “we can suppose almost anything—at least, a little imaginative girl can; but suppose he is dead—which I do not—dead or alive, he is in God’s good keeping,” was the reply.

Inna now had two new thoughts to ponder over. “Remember, there is no last remedy with a wise unfailing Providence;” “Oscar in God’s good keeping.” They came to her with thrilling freshness one day in the gallery at Owl’s Nest, as she wandered from picture to picture, musing and dreaming.

Outside lay the park, bathed in afternoon sunshine; she could see it all from the side window, and her young companion idling by the moat, where the marsh marigolds were blooming bright and yellow in the sunshine. There came a rustle as of a garment, and Madame Giche, leaning on her gold-headed cane, appeared, travelling towards her.

“Yes, Madame Giche.”

“Wouldn’t you be better out in the sunshine with the rest, rather than up here moping?”

“I wasn’t moping, dear Madame Giche. I was looking at the pictures, and thinking about them;” and the child gave a little forced laugh over her confession.

“Well, what do you think of them all? Now, which do you think is the handsomest face here?” And Madame Giche gave a sweeping glance round, as she stood leaning on her stick.

“This is the face I like best,” was the child’s reply, glancing up at that stranger face, “save for that of his mother.”

“This is the face I like best, my dear, but he broke my heart. Do you know who it is?” inquired the mother, a thrill in her voice.

“Yes, dear Madame Giche—your son,” returned Inna, with a child’s sensitive shame at having listened to so much from Sybil.

“Then—then, you know his story?”

“Yes, dear; it is no secret.”

The child stroked the hand she held, wondering what she ought to say next, a tear trickling down her cheek; and Madame Giche saw it.

“Are those tears for me, little Inna?” she asked gently.

“Yes.” A shy “Yes” it was.

“My dear, that will never do—young people’s sunshine should not be overshadowed by old people’s clouds. Now, do you know what I want you to do?”

“No, dear Madame Giche.”

“To come down and sing to me.”

“Sing that little thing I heard you practising so nicely yesterday,” came to her across the room. So, with a tinkling little prelude, she began—