out of the close.'

Sampson coloured up to the eyes, not at the implied taunt, which he would
never have discovered, or resented if he had, but at some idea which
crossed his own mind. 'I have been in an error,' he said; 'of a surety I
should have tarried for the babe.' So saying, he snatched his bone-headed
cane and hat, and hurried away towards Warroch wood faster than he was
ever known to walk before or after.

The Laird lingered some time, debating the point with the lady. At length
he saw the sloop of war again make her appearance; but, without
approaching the shore, she stood away to the westward with all her sails
set, and was soon out of sight. The lady's state of timorous and fretful
apprehension was so habitual that her fears went for nothing with her
lord and master; but an appearance of disturbance and anxiety among the
servants now excited his alarm, especially when he was called out of the
room, and told in private that Mr. Kennedy's horse had come to the stable
door alone, with the saddle turned round below its belly and the reins of
the bridle broken; and that a farmer had informed them in passing that
there was a smuggling lugger burning like a furnace on the other side of
the Point of Warroch, and that, though he had come through the wood, he
had seen or heard nothing of Kennedy or the young Laird, 'only there was
Dominie Sampson gaun rampauging about like mad, seeking for them.'

All was now bustle at Ellangowan. The Laird and his servants, male and
female, hastened to the wood of Warroch. The tenants and cottagers in the
neighbourhood lent their assistance, partly out of zeal, partly from
curiosity. Boats were manned to search the sea-shore, which, on the other
side of the Point, rose into high and indented rocks. A vague suspicion
was entertained, though too horrible to be expressed, that the child
might have fallen from one of these cliffs.

The evening had begun to close when the parties entered the wood, and
dispersed different ways in quest of the boy and his companion. The
darkening of the atmosphere, and the hoarse sighs of the November wind
through the naked trees, the rustling of the withered leaves which
strewed the glades, the repeated halloos of the different parties, which
often drew them together in expectation of meeting the objects of their
search, gave a cast of dismal sublimity to the scene.

At length, after a minute and fruitless investigation through the wood,
the searchers