water, and had saved him. They thought his persistence the remembrance of some delirious hallucination, some dream which haunted him, and which he could not sever from reality. He saw the Moldavian serfs, who came each day during his danger to the convent for news of him; and, whilst he rewarded them, interrogated them as to how and where they had discovered him. They answered that a dog had led them to where he lay, and that they had seen that he was all but lifeless, and had made a litter of pine-boughs and brought him to the gates of Monastica for succour. When he pressed them, and insisted that a woman had been the first to rescue him, the Moldavians shook their heads; they had found him, and had brought him hither. They had barely more intelligence than that of a kindly good-humoured animal, and adhered doggedly to their statement; it was useless to question them; Erceldoune bade them be given half the gold pieces in his travelling-belt, and let them go. It was not his nature to pursue uselessly, nor to give expression to a futile annoyance or an unavailing disappointment; he was silent from that moment on the subject.
The nuns, with their Mother Superior, thought he had become convinced that his fancy was the
