Had she possibly drowned herself?
No; Miss Joe was sure not; she was too much afraid of dying and leaving her babe.
Had she been carried off, then? and by whom?
Yes. It was finally concluded that she must have been carried off; but by whom? That was still the problem unsolved. Inquiries were made up and down the coast and in every direction. Advertisements were inserted in the papers, and large rewards offered for her discovery by General Garnet, Judge Wylie, and other benevolent neighbors. For to this sort of assistance Miss Joe made no objection. She considered the recovery of Agnes quite an affair of general interest, as indeed it was. Nothing, however, was heard of her.
As months passed, the mystery deepened, and people grew weary of conjecture.
CHAPTER XV.
THE ELFIN GIRL.
But who is this? What thing of sea or land!
Female of sex it seems.
—Samson Agonistes.
For a time Miss Joe had grieved immoderately over the untimely and mysterious fate of her niece, and the loneliness of her own lot, and the prospect of a poor and solitary old age before her; but soon, in the native kindness and disinterestedness of her heart, she turned to the child thus thrown upon her exclusive protection, and only hoped that she might be spared long enough to raise him, and see him able to take his own part; for, after all, small and helpless, and abandoned as he was, he was the last Hutton of the Isles, and the heir of—the little sand bank in the bay, yclept St. Clara’s Isle or Hutton’s Isle.