The inhabitants of Wolf’s Hope were now alarmed, and crowded to the place, some on shore, and some in boats, but their search availed nothing.  The tenacious depths of the quicksand, as is usual in such cases, retained its prey.

Our tale draws to a conclusion.  The Marquis of A——­, alarmed at the frightful reports that were current, and anxious for his kinsman’s safety, arrived on the subsequent day to mourn his loss; and, after renewing in vain a search for the body, returned, to forget what had happened amid the bustle of politics and state affairs.

Not so Caleb Balderstone.  If wordly profit could have consoled the old man, his age was better provided for than his earlier years had ever been; but life had lost to him its salt and its savour.  His whole course of ideas, his feelings, whether of pride or of apprehension, of pleasure or of pain, had all arisen from its close connexion with the family which was now extinguished.  He held up his head no longer, forsook all his usual haunts and occupations, and seemed only to find pleasure in moping about those apartments in the old castle which the Master of Ravenswood had last inhabited.  He ate without refreshment, and slumbered without repose; and, with a fidelity sometimes displayed by the canine race, but seldom by human beings, he pined and died within a year after the catastrophe which we have narrated.

The family of Ashton did not long survive that of Ravenswood.  Sir William Ashton outlived his eldest son, the Colonel, who was slain in a duel in Flanders; and Henry, by whom he was succeeded, died unmarried.  Lady Ashton lived to the verge of extreme old age, the only survivor of the group of unhappy persons whose misfortunes were owing to her implacability.  That she might internally feel compunction, and reconcile herself with Heaven, whom she had offended, we will not, and we dare not, deny; but to those around her she did not evince the slightest symptom either of repentance or remorse.  In all external appearance she bore the same bold, haughty, unbending character which she had displayed before these unhappy events.  A splendid marble monument records her name, titles, and virtues, while her victims remain undistinguished by tomb or epitath.