e room at one
of the Bachelors' on the arm of the leader of the cotillion, and the
subsequent sensation and heart-burnings.

"My reverie was interrupted by a hoarse voice calling, 'Ailsee!
Ailsee!'--seemingly just over in the forest.

"'Dad wants me,' she said with a smile. 'I'll go and fetch him back with
me. Please you folks wait a moment.' And she tripped lightly down the
garden and out into the wilderness beyond.

"Ten or fifteen minutes slipped by without the return of either Ailsee
or her father. The footfalls in the forest died away, and the stillness
was becoming oppressive.

"'Remarkable, truly,' said my wife, with a puzzled expression. 'Where
could she have gone? Do you think her father is keeping her? Dearest,'
she added gravely, 'don't laugh, I feel--I feel--that something dreadful
is going to happen. I don't know exactly what, but----'

"'Of course you don't know exactly what,' I interrupted. 'Come now, be a
sensible little woman. You surely don't believe in presentiments. It is
the heat; this sticky, Southern heat! I feel a little queer myself.'

"But nothing I could say quite banished the singular fancy which had
taken possession of my young wife. Womenkind cling tenaciously to absurd
ideas, especially when they are of the worrying kind; and Elizabeth
looked so troubled and sad that I soon caught the feeling and became
melancholy too.

"It was long past noon and intensely sultry, and we were sitting on the
porch where occasionally the faintest shadow of a breeze made life more
endurable. Our horses, maddened by the flies and heat, chafed and
stamped restlessly out at the gate. Elizabeth tried to amuse herself
with a huge album of daguerreotypes which occupied the place of honor in
the cabin parlor, and I smoked and lounged about, wondering what had
become of Ailsee.

"'Well,' said I at last, 'we can not wait here forever. If I am not
greatly mistaken there will be a storm before night, and we had better
get out of this at once. We can come down here some other day and renew
our acquaintance with the mysterious child of the forest.' So back
through the marsh we splashed our way, and arrived at Raven Hill barely
in time to escape the storm, which broke with fury just as Uncle Ashby
came around for our mud-bespattered steeds.

"Elizabeth went upstairs to change her dress and rest before dinner, and
I settled down in the library with the _Country Gentleman_. There was a
knock at the door, and Uncle