rectly he came back, holding out his hand.

"Come, now let us search for Elizabeth," he said.

"It is useless; I have searched."

"But come with me--it was not in town you should have looked; Elizabeth
would not go there."

Mellen arose and walked towards the bay. In passing a clump of
rosebushes Tom stopped to extricate a fragment of silk from the thorns.

"What dress did she wear that night?" he inquired, examining the shred
in his hand.

"I remember well, it was purple," answered Mellen, without lifting his
weary eyes from the ground.

"Come this way, for she has been here," said Tom. "This path leads to
the fishpond."

They walked on, Tom searching vigilantly all the thickets he passed, and
Mellen looking around him in terror lest the dead body of his wife
should appear and crush his last hope for ever.

"She has been this way," said Tom, when they reached the pond. "See,
that tuft of cat-tails has been broken. No, no, don't be afraid to look;
see yonder where the bushes are swept down; she went away towards the
shore."

Mellen groaned aloud. This was his most terrible fear. They walked on,
taking a path that curved round the bay, and leaving the shore tavern on
the right, went down to the beach. It was now sunset, and a golden glow
lay upon the waters till they broke along the beach like great waves of
pearls and opals drifting over the Sound together, and melting in the
sand. Near the two men was a winrow of black seaweed, on which great
drops of spray were quivering. Something in the appearance of this dark
mass arrested Tom's attention. He went up to the pile of weeds and
kicked them apart; a dark sodden substance, compact and heavy, lay
underneath. He took it in his hands, gave the weeds that clung to it a
shake, and held it up. Mellen came forward, his white lips parted, his
breath rising with pain. He reached forth his hand, but uttered no word.

It was the ample shawl that Elizabeth had worn that night.

CHAPTER LXXVIII.

IN BENSON'S TAVERN.

She was dead! That fiendish man had spoken the truth--Mellen believed it
now. Elizabeth was dead, and he had killed her--that noble, grand woman,
so resolute in her sacrifice, so determined to save that girl, to
preserve him from the hardest shock to his honor and pride, had offered
herself up to death, body and soul.

Those few moments of conviction changed him more than many years would
have done. The pride and anger which had helped to aid