In the mean time, the hat and mantle of Clara having been found upon the banks of the river, the duke and Sir Ambrose were inconsolable; and dispatched emissaries every where in search of her. Amongst the rest, Father Murphy and Abelard were sent to the summer palace of the Queen, to inquire if she had there been heard of. Rosabella and her Court, however, had removed to London immediately upon the flight of Elvira being discovered, and the disconsolate searchers having inquired of every one they met in vain, wandered through the gardens, restless and forlorn, till at last they found the mysterious cavern. The aspect of the place was dreary in the extreme: a few stunted shrubs grew upon the banks of a dark, dull rivulet; and Father Murphy shivered and crossed himself as he looked around.
"Och, murther! and this is an awful place, Mr. Abelard," said he; "and I'm after thinking the sooner we get out of it the better."
"Ah, what is that?" cried the butler, springing forward eagerly, and snatching at something in the bushes that looked white.
"It is Clara's pocket-handkerchief, poor darling!" said the friar; "see, here is her name worked upon it by her own pretty fingers:" and as he turned to examine it, his foot slipped, and he rolled into the water, floundering about like a huge porpoise.
"Oh dear! oh dear!" cried Abelard, "he will certainly be drowned. Submersion in an aqueous fluid is almost always destructive of animal life, and I see little chance that he has of escape."
"Och! and will ye let me drown while ye're talking?" asked the indignant priest. "Before it's the good-natured thing ye'd be doing in pulling me out, will ye let me be suffocated?"
"No, no, certainly not!" returned Abelard; "my agony is unspeakable at your distress. I only doubt how I shall be able to raise you without a lever or pulley. The application of the mechanical powers—"
"May go to the devil," cried Father Murphy, as he crawled out without assistance; "and so you would have let me drown, whilst you were talking of the mechanical powers?"
"Excuse me, father," returned Abelard; "friendship is a powerful affection of the human mind; it invigorates, it warms."
"Does it," said the priest, shaking himself like a water-spaniel; "then I should be very glad to have a little of it at present, for I am shivering with cold; to say nothing of being so hungry that I could eat my fingers."