Scarcely had Hargrave quitted Laura, when her senses began to return, and with them an indefinite feeling of danger and alarm. The blood gushing from her mouth and nostrils, she quickly revived to a full sense of her situation, and instinctively endeavoured to quit a spot now so dark and lonely. Terror gave her strength to proceed. Every path in her native woods was familiar to her: she darted through them with what speed she could command; and, reckless of all danger but that from which she fled, she leapt from the projecting rocks, or gradually descended from the more fearful declivities, by clinging to the trees which burst from the fissures; till, exhausted with fatigue, she reached the valley, and entered the garden that surrounded her home. Here, supported no longer by the sense of danger, her spirits utterly failed her; and she threw herself on the ground, without a wish but to die.

From this state she was roused by the voice of her father, who, on the outside of the fence, was inquiring of one of the villagers, whether she had been seen. Wishing, she scarcely knew why, to escape all human eyes, she rose, and, without meeting Captain Montreville, gained her own apartment. As she closed her door, and felt for a moment the sense of security, which every one experiences in the chamber which he calls his own, – ‘Oh!’ cried she, ‘that I could thus shut out the base world for ever.’

There was in Laura's chamber one spot, which had, in her eyes, something of holy, for it was hallowed by the regular devotions of her life. On it she had breathed her first infant prayer. There shone on her the eastern sun, as she offered her morning tribute of praise. There first fell the shades of evening that invited her to implore the protection of her God.