Percy went again to the village, where he made further inquiries; but nothing of importance was learned. He had promised the earl that he would spend the night at the castle; so at midnight he returned, finding the old nobleman up waiting for him.
It seemed almost wrong to go to bed and to sleep while the dear one was lost to them, but the demands of nature were not to be denied. The earl read a prayer, the youth prayed fervently from his own heart, and then they sought their rest.
It was near the hour of eight o’clock on the following morning, and our hero had been to the village and back again to the castle, and was on his way to the village once more, when he was met by the boy, Guy Carroll, his face flushed and his blue eyes fairly blazing.
“Guy! What is it?”
They were in the edge of the wood, and free from observation. The boy cast a quick, eager glance around and then—
“Oh, Mr. Maitland! It is Cap’n Tryon after all!”
“What of him? What? What?” Percy exclaimed, catching the boy by the arm, with an anxiety that was torturing.
“It’s he, sir, that has run off with the lady from the castle! Yesterday—late in the afternoon—Bryan Vank and Gurt Warnell—they were two of them that had been sent for by the cap’n—they came aboard the brig and carried away a big basket full of provisions; and late at night Uncle Donald found out all about it. He wouldn’t tell me who told him; but it seems Vank let it leak out while he was waitin’ for the basket to be filled. The provisions were for two women—two young girls—that the cap’n’d got stowed away in one of the caverns on the slope of the Crag.”
Percy started as though he had been shot. It was like the bursting of a thunderbolt over his head from a clear sky. In his wild imaginings he had several times had a picture in mind of his darling shut up in that place; but he had given it no serious thought.
Could it be Ralph Tryon, and not Lord Oakleigh, who had spirited away the two girls? It must be.