On the day after the dinner-party at Hampton Privets Mr. Fenwick made his little excursion out in the direction towards Devizes, of which he had spoken to his wife. The dinner had gone off very quietly, and there was considerable improvement in the coffee. There was some gentle sparring between the two clergymen, if that can be called sparring in which all the active pugnacity was on one side. Mr. Fenwick endeavoured to entrap Mr. Chamberlaine into arguments, but the Prebendary escaped with a degree of skill,—without the shame of sullen refusal,—that excited the admiration of Mr. Fenwick’s wife. “After all, he is a clever man,” she said, as she went home, “or he could never slip about as he does, like an eel, and that with so very little motion.”

On the next morning the Vicar started alone in his gig. He had at first said that he would take with him a nondescript boy, who was partly groom, partly gardener, and partly shoeblack, and who consequently did half the work of the house; but at last he decided that he would go alone. “Peter is very silent, and most meritoriously uninterested in everything,” he said to his wife. “He wouldn’t tell much, but even he might tell something.” So he got himself into his gig, and drove off alone. He took the Devizes road, and passed through Lavington without asking a question; but when he was half way between that place and Devizes, he stopped his horse at a lane that led away to the right. He had been on the road before, but he did not know that lane. He waited awhile till an old woman whom he saw coming to him, reached him, and asked her whether the lane would take him across to the Marlborough Road. The old woman knew nothing of the Marlborough Road, and looked as though she had never heard of Marlborough. Then he asked the way to Pycroft Common. Yes; the lane would take him to Pycroft Common. Would it take him to the Bald-faced Stag? The old woman said it would take him to Rump End Corner, “but she didn’t know nowt o’ t’other place.” He took the lane, however, and without much difficulty made his way to the Bald-faced Stag,—which, in the days of the glory of that branch of the Western Road, used to supply beer to at least a dozen coaches a-day, but which now, alas! could slake no drowth but that of the rural aborigines. At the Bald-faced Stag, however, he found that he could get a feed of corn, and here he put up his horse,—and saw the corn eaten.

Pycroft Common was a mile from him, and to Pycroft Common he walked. He took the road towards Marlborough for half a mile, and then broke off across the open ground to the left. There was no difficulty in finding this place, and now it was his object to discover the cottage of Mrs. Burrows without asking the neighbours for her by name. He had obtained a certain amount of information, and thought that he could act on it. He walked on to the middle of the common, and looked for his points of bearing. There was the beer-house, and there was the lane that led away to Pewsey, and there were the two brick cottages standing together. Mrs. Burrows lived in the little white cottage just behind. He walked straight up to the door, between the sunflowers and the rose-bush, and, pausing for a few moments to think whether or no he would enter the cottage unannounced, knocked at the door. A policeman would have entered without doing so,—and so would a poacher knock over a hare on its form; but whatever creature a gentleman or a sportsman be hunting, he will always give it a chance. He rapped, and immediately heard that there were sounds within. He rapped again, and in about a minute was told to enter. Then he opened the door, and found but one person within. It was a young woman, and he stood for a moment looking at her before he spoke.

“Carry Brattle,” he said, “I am glad that I have found you.”

“Laws, Mr. Fenwick!”

“Carry, I am so glad to see you;"—and then he put out his hand to her.

“Oh, Mr. Fenwick, I ain’t fit for the likes of you to touch,” she said. But as his hand was still stretched out she put her own into it, and he held it in his grasp for a few seconds. She was a poor, sickly-looking thing now, but there were the remains of great beauty in the face,—or rather, the presence of beauty, but of beauty obscured by flushes of riotous living and periods of want, by ill-health, harsh usage, and, worst of all, by the sharp agonies of an intermittent conscience. It was a pale, gentle face, on which there were still streaks of pink,—a soft, laughing face it had been once, and still there was a gleam of light in the eyes that told of past merriment, and almost promised mirth to come, if only some great evil might be cured. Her long flaxen curls still hung down her face, but they were larger, and, as Fenwick thought, more tawdry than of yore; and her cheeks were thin, and her eyes were hollow; and then there had come across her mouth that look of boldness which the use of bad, sharp words, half-wicked and half-witty, will always give. She was dressed decently, and was sitting in a low chair, with a torn, disreputable-looking old novel in her hand. Fenwick knew that the book had been taken up on the spur of the moment, as there had certainly been someone there when he had knocked at the door.

And yet, though vice had laid its heavy hand upon her, the glory and the brightness, and the sweet outward flavour of innocence, had not altogether departed from her. Though her mouth was bold, her eyes were soft and womanly, and she looked up into the face of the clergyman with a gentle, tamed, beseeching gaze, which softened and won his heart at once. Not that his heart had ever been hard against her. Perhaps it was a fault with him that he never hardened his heart against a sinner, unless the sin implied pretence and falsehood. At this moment, remembering the little Carry Brattle of old, who had sometimes been so sweetly obedient, and sometimes so wilful, under his hands, whom he had petted, and caressed, and scolded, and loved,—whom he had loved undoubtedly in part because she had been so pretty,—whom he had hoped that he might live to marry to some good farmer, in whose kitchen he would ever be welcome, and whose children he would christen;—remembering all this, he would now, at this moment, have taken her in his arms and embraced her, if he dared, showing her that he did not account her to be vile, begging her to become more good, and planning some course for her future life.

“I have come across from Bullhampton, Carry, to find you,” he said.

“It’s a poor place you’re come to, Mr. Fenwick. I suppose the police told you of my being here?”

“I had heard of it. Tell me, Carry, what do you know of Sam?”

“Of Sam?”

“Yes—of Sam. Don’t tell me an untruth. You need tell me nothing, you know, unless you like. I don’t come to ask as having any authority, only as a friend of his, and of yours.”

She paused a moment before she replied. “Sam hasn’t done any harm to nobody,” she said.

“I don’t say he has. I only want to know where he is. You can understand, Carry, that it would be best that he should be at home.”

She paused again, and then she blurted out her answer. “He went out o’ that back door, Mr. Fenwick, when you came in at t’other.” The Vicar immediately went to the back door, but Sam, of course, was not to be seen.

“Why should he be hiding if he has done no harm?” said the Vicar.

“He thought it was one of them police. They do be coming here a’most every day, till one’s heart faints at seeing ’em. I’d go away if I’d e’er a place to go to.”

“Have you no place at home, Carry?”

“No, sir; no place.”

This was so true that he couldn’t tell himself why he had asked the question. She certainly had no place at home till her father’s heart should be changed towards her.

“Carry,” said he, speaking very slowly, “they tell me that you are married. Is that true?”

She made him no answer.

“I wish you would tell me, if you can. The state of a married woman is honest at any rate, let her husband be who he may.”

“My state is not honest.”

“You are not married, then?”

“No, sir.”

He hardly knew how to go on with this interrogation, or to ask questions about her past and present life, without expressing a degree of censure which, at any rate for the present, he wished to repress.

“You are living here, I believe, with old Mrs. Burrows?” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

“I was told that you were married to her son.”

“They told you untrue, sir. I know nothing of her son, except just to have see’d him.”

“Is that true, Carry?”

“It is true. It wasn’t he at all.&rd............