"Hold the young lady round the wrist," said Donald, "while I see if this thing can be removed without hurting. Yes, it can. Hold her wrist firmly, for I must use both my hands." Laura Bronté obeyed. Donald got his fingers just under the ring which encircled Louisa's wrist. "Steady, girl," he said. Then, with one expansion of his mighty shoulders he snapped the steel ring into two parts, hurting Louisa not at all, and only just cutting a hole or two in his own hands. "Take the young lady upstairs,” he said, “dress her, and prepare to come with me.” "Oh, I shall be put to prison!" she exclaimed. If "Do as I tell you, and don't stop to cry. you behave properly now, you may get off some part of your punishment." In twenty minutes Louisa, still half-stupified, though immensely revived by the fresh air outside, was leaning on Donald's stalwart arm, and going slowly toward the Rectory. Laura Bronté walked in front of them, as Donald had made up his mind not to lose sight of her. All that occurred took scarcely as long to happen as it takes me to write; wherefore, when Donald entered the garden gate with Louisa on his arm, the five gentlemen were still walking up and down. Saint Osyth and Silvester were both in a state of delirious excitement, but the Squire and the Doctor kept them back. "She must go to bed at once," said Sterne. "She also has been drugged. That young person will be able to throw some light on it, no doubt." The Squire, acting on this hint, said to Donald, "Take the young woman to Silchester, and tell the butler she is to be locked up till I come home. Let them give her some plain food. And do you wait, Donald, till I come; it won't be tlong." Donald obeyed orders implicitly. He made Laura accompany him to Silchester, which she did with a heavy heart and a lagging foot; and when she reached there, she was shut into a lock-up adjacent to the justice-room, where accused persons were put pending the Squire's arrival to do magisterial duties, and was supplied with some tea and bread-and-butter. mother's care. Louisa, though of stronger mould than Silvia, was so wearied by her suffering that the Doctor gave strict orders against her being disturbed, or allowed to give any account of what had occurred to her. So she took refreshment and went to bed, and the three gentlemen walked rapidly towards Silchester, picking up on the way Monsieur Simonet, who chanced to be at home. Hence it was Silvia who had the first opportunity of telling her experiences. The Doctor would not let her leave her apartment, a pleasant suit of rooms: so when she had been treated with culinary medicine, she held a little drawing-room, and told her story. She told how they had gone to pick white waterlilies in the Queen's Bath, borrowing one of the parson's pastoral staffs; and how she had slipped in, and Louisa had slipped in after her; and how an apparent servant asked them into the tower, and wrapped them in blankets, and gave them hot brandy-and-water;-and then she re |