s and laborers' cottages were swept away by the flood. Their
inmates happily had saved themselves by speedy flight up the mountain
side, and were found the next day safe at Black Hall, where they had
taken refuge.

But the sunlight also discovered many more wretches made homeless by the
flood, and now sitting and shuddering upon the rocks, up and down the
mountain sides.

But the dwellings of all those who had been so fortunate as to escape
injury by the flood, were freely opened to receive the homeless
sufferers.

It was late in the day before the condition of the ground enabled Lyon
Berners, attended by some villagers, to seek the site of the late
prison.

Not a vestige of the building remained. The very spot on which it had
once stood was unrecognizable--a vast morass of mud and wreck.

The warden and his family, with Miss Pendleton and a few of the officers
of the prison, were found about a mile beyond the scene, grouped
together on a high hill, and utterly overcome, in mind and body, by the
combined influences of cold and hunger, grief and horror.

"For the Lord's sake, where is my wife? where is Sybil?" anxiously
inquired Lyon Berners, though scarcely knowing whether he hoped or
feared she might be alive.

Beatrix Pendleton, who had sat with her head bowed down upon her knees,
now raised it and said:

"Heaven knows! I tried to make them go and save her; but they would not!
I refused to leave the prison without her, but they forced me on the
boat."

"We couldn't have saved her," spoke the warden; "her cell was right at
the corner of the building, at the joining of the creek and the river.
It was overflowed before we got there, and the water, which must a
busted in the window, was a rushing down the corridor and filling up the
place so fast, that we had to run up the stairs to the next story to
save our own lives."

"Heaven's will be done!" groaned Lyon Berners, who, heart-broken as he
was, scarcely understood or believed the warden's explanation, or knew
whether he himself were merely resigned, or really rejoiced that his
wife had met this fate now, rather than lived to await a still more
horrible one.

"And the poor woman who was attending her, and the young child, have
also perished?" added Mr. Berners, after a pause, and in an
interrogative tone.

Beatrix nodded sadly, and the warden said:

"Yes, sir, of course, which they all three being in the cell together,
shared the same fate! And if we c