WHAT WAS SOUGHT, AND WHAT WAS FOUND.
They sought her that night, and they sought her next day,
They sought her in vain till a week passed away.
The highest, the lowest, the loneliest spot,
Her husband sought wildly, but found her not.--THE MISTLETOE BOUGH.
When Lyon Berners and his faithful servant returned to the Haunted
Chapel, after having comfortably disposed of their horses for the rest
of the night, the interior was still so dark that they did not at first
discover the absence of Sybil, especially as the covering lay heaped
upon the mattress so like a sleeping form, that even in a less murky
darkness it might have been mistaken for her.
As it was now very cold, Mr. Berners, who had found a tinder-box and a
coil of wax tapers among his other effects in the wagon, struck a light,
with the intention of kindling a fire.
Joe brought some broken sticks and dry brushwood from the far corner
where Lyon Berners had piled it up just before the flight from the
chapel, and between the master and man they soon kindled a cheerful
blaze that lighted up every nook and crevice of the old interior.
Then Mr. Berners turned toward the mattress to see how his wife might be
sleeping.
"Why, she is not here! She has waked up and walked out," he exclaimed,
in some surprise and annoyance, but not in the least alarm, for he
naturally supposed that she had only left the chapel for a few minutes,
and would soon return.
"Hi! whar de debbil she took herself off to, all alone, dis onlawful
time o' de night?" cried Joe, in dismay.
"Oh, not far! She will soon be back again," answered Mr. Berners
cheerfully. And then he took one of the blankets from the mattress and
folded it up for a seat, and sat down upon it near the fire, and
stretched his benumbed hands over the blaze. Joe followed his example,
stretching out his hands also, and staring across the fire at his
master--staring at such a rate that Mr. Berners, feeling somewhat
inconvenienced, sharply demanded:
"What the deuce do you mean by that, Joe?"
"I want to go and sarch for my mistess. I don't feel satisfied into my
own mind about her."
"Why, what are you afraid of, man?"
"_Ghostesses._"
"Absurd!"
"Well, now, no it an't, marster. I've knowed Miss Sybil longer'n you
have. I've knowed her ever since she was born, and I don't believe as
she'd go out all alone by herself in the dead of night to the lonesome
church-yard--that I don't. And I's afeard as the ghostesses have
spirited her away."
"Preposterous, Joe! Have you lived in an intelligent family, and in a
Christian community all your life, to believe in 'ghostesses,' as you
call them? Are you such a big fool as all that, at your time of life?"
"Yes, marster, I's jest sich a big fool as all that, at my time of life.
And I want to go out and sarch for my young mistess," said Joe, in the
spirit of "dogged persistence," as he began to gather himself up.
"Stop, stay where you are. If one of us must go, it must be myself,"
said Mr. Berners.
"Which would be a heap the most properest proceedings, any ways,"
muttered Joe, sulkily settling himself in his seat again, in a manner
that seemed to say, "And I wonder why you didn't do it before."
"She really ought to be back by this time, even if she went out but the
moment before we returned; and she may have gone out before that,"
murmured Mr. Berners, with some little vague uneasiness, as he arose and
buttoned his overcoat, and went into the church-yard.
The day was dawning, and the old tombstones gleamed faintly from their
bushes, in the pale gray light of early morning.
"She cannot have gone far; she would not venture; she must be very
near," he said to himself, and he murmured softly:
"_Sybil! Sybil!_ where are you, love?"
There was no answer, and he raised his voice a little.
"Sybil, Sybil, my darling!"
Still there was no response. His vague uneasiness became anxiety, and he
called aloud:
"SYBIL! SYBIL!"
But nothing came of it, and his anxiety grew to terror, and he ran
wildly about shouting her name till all the mountain rocks and glens
echoed and reechoed:
"SYBIL! SYBIL!"
And now he was joined by Joe, whose faithful and affectionate heart was
wrung with anxiety and distress for his beloved and missing young
mistress.
"You can't find her? Oh, Marster, where is she gone? What have become of
her? Oh, what shall we do?" he cried, wringing his hands in great
trouble.
"We must search for her, Joe. This is very strange, and very alarming,"
said Mr. Berners, striking off into the path that led to the fountain,
and shouting her name at every step.
But only the mountain echoes answered. In an agony of anxiety they beat
about the woods and thickets, and climbed the rocks and went down into
the glens, still shouting--always shouting her name.
Day broadened, the sun arose, and its first rays struck them as they
stood upon the heights behind the chapel, looking all over the
wilderness.
"In the name of Heaven, now what are we to do?" exclaimed Lyon Berners,
speaking more to himself than to another.
Joe was standing, leaning upon his stick in an attitude of the deepest
despair. But suddenly he raised his head, and a gleam of light shot over
his dark face, as he said:
"I tell you what we can do, Marster: where she's took to, we can find
out at all ewents. I say where she's took to, for she never went of her
own accords."
"Heaven help my poor darling! no; she never did. But how do you think
you can trace her, Joe?"
"This a-way! I'll take the freshest of them horses, and ride home as
fast as I can for life and death; and I'll snatch up her little dog as
has been pining away ever since she left, and I'll bring it here and
make it smell to the bedclothes where she lay, and then put it on the
scent, to lead us the way she went."
"Eureka, Joe! The instinct of faithful affection, in man or brute,
sometimes puts pure reason to the blush by its superior acumen,"
exclaimed Mr. Berners.
"I don't know no more 'n the dead what you're a-talking about, Marster;
but that's the way to find out where Miss Sybil was took," answered
practical Joe.
"Come, then, we will go at once and look at the horses. I think, Joe,
that one of your cart horses would be better to take, as they have not
been so hard worked as ours," said Mr. Berners, as they ran down the
steep to the thicket in the rear of the chapel, where they had left
their horses.
In a very few minutes Joe had selected and saddled his horse, and stood
ready to start.
"I needn't tell you to be prudent, Joe, and to drop no hint of your
errand," said Mr. Berners.
"Well, no, you needn't take that there trouble, Marse Lyon, 'cause you'd
be a-cautioning of Joe, as is cautious enough a'ready. Good-morning,
Marse Lyon. I'll be at Black Hall afore the fam'ly is well out of bed,
and I'll be back here with the little dog afore you have time to get
unpatient," said Joe, climbing into his saddle and riding away.
Mr. Berners returned to the chapel, where he found the fire smouldering
out, but everything else in the same condition in which he had left it
when he went in pursuit of Sybil.
Far too restless to keep still, he walked up and down the length of the
chapel, until he was fairly tired out. Then he went to the front door
and sat down, keeping his eyes upon the entrance of the little thicket
path, by which he knew that Joe must return. And although he knew it was
much too early to expect his messenger back, yet he still impatiently
watched that path.
Presently the sound of approaching horsemen struck upon his listening
ear. They were coming up the path through the thicket, and presently
they emerged from it--not two or three, but couple after couple, until
the old churchyard was filled with sheriff's officers and militia-men.
Sheriff Benthwick himself was at their head.
In great surprise, as if they had come in quest of him, Mr. Berners went
forward to receive the party.
Lyon Berners was known to have been the companion of his fugitive wife,
and therefore a sort of an outlaw; yet the sheriff took off his hat, and
accosted him respectfully.
"Mr. Berners, I am greatly surprised to see you here," he said.
"Not less than myself at seeing you," answered Lyon.
"We are here to seek out a set of burglars whom we have reason to
believe have their lair in this chapel," said Mr. Benthwick.
"Then your errand is not to me," observed Lyon.
"Certainly not! Though, should I find Mrs. Berners here, as well as
yourself, as I think now highly probable, I shall have a most painful
duty to perform."
"Ah, sir! within the last terrible month, I have become all too much
accustomed to the sight of friends with 'painful duties to perform,' as
they delicately put it. But you will be spared the pain. Mrs. Berners is
not here with me."
"Not here with you? Then where is she?"
"Excuse me, Mr. Benthwick," said Mr. Berners, gravely; "you certainly
forget yourself; you cannot possibly expect me to tell you--even if I
knew myself," he added, in an undertone.
"No, I cannot, indeed," admitted the sheriff. "Nor did I come here to
look for Mrs. Berners, having had neither information nor suspicion that
she was here; nevertheless, if I find her I shall be constrained to
arrest her. Were it not for my duty, I could almost pray that I might
not find her."
"I do not think you will," said Mr. Berners, grimly.
And meanwhile the officers and the militia-men, at a sign from the
sheriff, had surrounded the chapel so that it would be impossible for
any one who might be within its walls to escape from it.
"Now, Mr. Berners, as you assure me that your wife is not within this
building, perhaps you may have no objection to enter it with me," said
the sheriff.
"Not the least in the world," answered Lyon Berners, leading the way
into the chapel, as the sheriff dismounted from his horse, threw the
bridle to an attendant, and followed.
The interior was soon thoroughly searched, having nothing but its bare
walls and vacant windows, with the exception of Sybil's forsaken bed
near the altar, the smouldering fire in what had once been the middle
aisle, and the little pile of brushwood in the corner.
"There is certainly no one here but yourself, Mr. Berners; yet here are
signs of human habitation," said the sheriff significantly.
Lyon Berners laughed painfully. And then he thought it would be safest
to inform the sheriff of some part of the truth, rather than to leave
him to his own conjectures, which might cover the whole case. So he
answered:
"I do not mind telling you, Mr. Benthwick, that myself and my injured
wife took refuge in this place immediately after the terrible tragedy
that so unjustly compromised her safety. We remained here several days,
and then departed. These things that you notice had been brought for our
accommodation, and were left here when we went away."
"So you were not at Pendleton's?"
"Not for an hour."
"That is strange. But how comes it that you are here now without your
wife, Mr. Berners?"
"Sir, I have told you all that I mean to tell, and now my lips are
sealed on the subject of my wife," said Lyon Berners, firmly.
"I cannot and do not blame you in the least," said the sheriff, kindly.
"All that we have to do now, is to pursue our search for the burglars,
and if in the course of it we should come upon Mrs. Berners, we must do
our duty," he concluded.
"To that proposition Mr. Berners assented with a silent bow and bitterly
compressed lips. The sheriff then went to the door of the vault, and
stooping down with his hands upon his knees, peered through the iron
grating, more in curiosity than in any hope of finding a clue to the
robbers. And in fact he discovered nothing but the head of that narrow
staircase whose foot disappeared in the darkness below.
"Phew! what a damp, deadly air comes up from that foul pit! it hasn't
been opened in half a century, I suppose," exclaimed Mr. Benthwick,
taking hold of the rusty bars and trying to shake the grating; but
finding it immovable, he ceased his efforts and turned away.
Then he went to the chapel door, and called his men around him, saying:
"There is no sign of the miscreants inside the ruin; we must search for
them outside."
And he divided his party into four detachments; and one he sent up the
narrow path leading to the fountain, another he sent up on the heights,
and another down in the glen; while he himself led the fourth back upon
the path leading through the thicket. And they beat the woods in all
directions without coming upon the "trail" of the burglars. But Sheriff
Benthwick, in going through the thicket with his little party, met a
harmless negro on a tired horse with a little dog before him. The
sheriff knew the negro, and accosted him by name.
"Joe, what are you doing here, so far from your home?"
Joe was ready with his answer:
"If you please, marster, I am coming to fetch away some truck left here
by a picnic party from our house."
"Ah! a picnic party! I know all about that picnic party! I have been up
to the old ruin and had a talk with your master, and he has told me of
it," said the sheriff cunningly, hoping to betray the negro into some
admissions that might be of service to him in tracing Sybil.
But his cunning was no match for Joe's.
"Well, marster," he said, "if Marse Lyon telled you all about that, you
must be satisfied into your honorable mind, as I am a telling of the
truth, and does come after the truck left in the chapel, which you may
see my wagon a-standin' out there on the road beyant for yourself."
"Then if you have a wagon, why do you come on horseback?"
"Lor's marster, I couldn't no ways get a wagon through this here
thicket."
The sheriff felt that that was true, and that he had been making a fool
of himself. He made a great many more inquiries, but received no
satisfaction from astute Joe. He asked no question about the little dog,
considering her of no importance. And at length, having no pretext to
stop the negro, he let him pass and go on.
Joe, glad to be relieved, touched up his horse and trotted briskly
through the thicket, and through the graveyard, to the ruined door of
the old chapel. Here he dismounted, tied his horse to a tree, and put
down the little Skye terrier, who no sooner found herself at liberty,
than she bounded into the church and ran with joyous leaps and barks,
and jumped upon her master, licking, or kissing, as she understood
kissing, his hands and face all over with her little tongue, and
assuring him how glad she was to see him.
"Nelly, Nelly, good Nelly, pretty Nelly," said Mr. Berners, caressing
her soft, curly brown hair.
But Nelly grew fidgety; something was wanting--the best thing of all was
wanting--her mistress! So she jumped from her master's lap, not
forgetting to kiss him good-by, by a direct lick upon his lips, and then
she ran snuffing and whining about the floor of the chapel until she
came to the mattress and blankets, where she began wildly to root and
paw about, whining piteously all the while.
"Nelly, good dog," said Mr. Berners, taking the blanket and holding it
to her nose. "Sybil, Sybil! seek her, seek her!"
The little Skye terrier looked up with a world of intelligence and
devotion in her brown eyes, and re-commenced her rooting and pawing and
snuffing around the bedding, and for some little time was at fault; but
at length, with a quick bark of delight, she struck a line of scent, and
with her nose close to the floor, cautiously followed it to the door of
the vault, at which she stopped and began to scratch and bark wildly,
hysterically--running back to her master and whining, and then running
forward to the door, and barking and scratching with all her might and
main.
"There she is, Marster. Mistess is down in that vault, so sure's I'm a
livin' nigger," exclaimed Joe, who now came up to the door.
"Good Heaven! she could not live there an hour; the very air is death!
But if there, with a breath of life remaining, she must hear and answer
us," exclaimed Lyon Berners, in breathless haste, as he went to the door
of the vault; and putting his lips close to the bars, called loudly:
"Sybil, Sybil! my darling, are you there?"
But though he bent his ear and listened in the dead silence and dread
suspense, no breath of answer came. And little Nelly, who had ceased her
noise, began to whine again.
Lyon Berners soothed her into quietness, and began to call again and
again; but still no breath of response from the dark and silent depths
below.
"If she is there, she is dead!" groaned Lyon Berners, in a voice of
agony, as he thought of all Sybil had told him of the open vault and the
mysterious figures that had passed to and from it in the night, and
which he had set down as so many dreams and nightmares, reverted to his
memory. Oh, if this chapel were indeed the den of thieves; if they had
some secret means of opening that vault; if they had come upon his
sleeping wife while she was left alone in the chapel, and robbed her of
the money and jewels she had about her person, and then murdered her,
and taken her body down into the vault for concealment; or if, as was
most likely, for there was no mark of violence or stain of blood about
the place--they had taken her to the vault first, and robbed and
murdered her there.
Oh, if these horrible fears should be realized!
With the very thought Lyon Berners went pale and cold as marble in an
anguish such as he had never felt in the severest crisis of their sorely
troubled lives.
"Joe!" he cried, "go search the wagon for that crowbar belonging to
Captain Pendleton. It must be there somewhere. And I must break this
vault door open, or break my heart-strings in the trial."
"The crowbar is all right, Marster. And I'll go and fetch it as fast as
I can. But we'll nebber see Mistess alive again! Nebber, Marster, in
this world!" sobbed Joe, as he arose from his knees near the door and
went upon his errand.
Little Nelly renewed her passionate demonstrations of distress and
anxiety; now furiously barking and scratching at the door; now jumping
upon her master's breast, and looking up into his face and whining, as
if telling him that her mistress was down there, imploring his human aid
to free her, and wondering why it was not given.
"I know it, my poor little dog! I know it all!" said Lyon, soothingly.
But little Nelly was incredulous and inconsolable, and continued her
hysterical deportment through the half hour which intervened between the
departure and the return of Joe.
"Ah, give me the tool!" eagerly exclaimed Mr. Berners, snatching the
crowbar from the negro, as soon as he saw him.
And he went and applied it with all his force to the door, straining his
strong muscles until they knotted like cords, while Joe looked on in
anxiety and suspense, and little Nelly stood approvingly wagging her
tail, as if to say:
"Now, at last, you are doing the right thing."
But with all Lyon's straining and wrenching, he failed to move the
impassable door one hair's breadth.
Joe also took a turn at the crowbar; but with no more success.
They rested a while, and then united their efforts, and with all their
strength essayed to force the door; but without the slightest effect
upon its immovable bars.
"I might have known we could not do it this way, for neither Pendleton
nor myself could succeed in doing so. Joe, we must take down the altar
and take up the flagstones; but that will be a work of time and
difficulty, and you will have to go back home and bring the proper
tools."
"But the day is most gone, Marster, and it will take me most all night
to go to Black Hall and get the tools and come back here. And is my poor
mistress to stay down there into that dismal place all that time?"
sobbed the negro.
"Joe! if she is there, as the little dog insists that she is, you know
that she must be dead. And it is her body that we are seeking," groaned
Lyon Berners, in despair.
"I knows it, Marster--I knows it too well; but I can't feel as it is
true, all de same. And oh! even to leave her dear body there so long!"
said Joe, bursting into a storm of tears and sobs.
"That cannot be helped, my poor fellow. Besides, I shall sit at this
door and watch till your return, and we can work down into the vault.
She shall not be quite alone, Joe."
So persuaded, Joe, unmindful of fatigue, once more set out for Black
Hall. But on this occasion he took another horse, which was fresher. The
sun had now set, and the short winter twilight was darkening into
night.