Chapter XIV.

"Confess the truth."
-- _Measure for Measure._

"You would pluck out the heart of my mystery."
-- _Hamlet._

Claude Montigny rode to Stillyside and back, and
was again with the advocate within the hour. To
conceive the terror and outcry in that quiet dwelling,
when its inmates ascertained that Amanda was miss-
ing, let the reader recall the commotion in the castle
of Macbeth, when on the morning following his fatal
entrance beneath its battlements, it is discovered
that the royal Duncan has been murdered. As
vehement and as wild as when the distracted Macduff,
in frantic tones and with wringing hands, declares
to the assembling sons and thanes of the ill-starred
monarch, that, "confusion now has made its master-
piece, most sacrilegeous murder has broken open the
Lord's anointed temple, and stolen hence the life
o' the building," was the outcry and disorder on the
discovery of Amanda's absence; and the wail and
lamentation rung in Claude's ear as he rode away
from the gate to return to Montreal, where, still
pacing the library, the advocate anxiously awaited
him. By the ratiocination, as well as by the intui-
tion, of the old man, the seigneur of Mainville was
reasonably to be suspected of being at least an acces-
sory to the stealing of Amanda. Claude, too, was
not unvisited by suspicions of his father's complicity;

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