It was past mid-day when a loud peal at the bell of Ivy Lodge startled the women in the kitchen. Polly ran to the front door to open it. There stood her master, who pushed quickly into the house past her. "Is your mistress come back?" he asked almost breathlessly.

"No, sir! Oh, mercy me, what's the matter? What has happened?" she cried, for his face showed undisguised terror and agitation. He sat down in the dining-room and asked for a glass of wine. Having drunk it at a gulp, he said, "I cannot understand it. I have been nearly to Whitford along the meadow-path; I didn't try the other way, but then she would not have wandered towards Duckwell, surely! Then I crossed the fields and came back by the road, looking everywhere, and asking every one I met. Nothing to be seen of her. Your mistress's manner has been so strange of late. You must have noticed it. I—I—am afraid—I cannot help being afraid that some terrible thing has happened to her. I have had a dreadful weight and presentiment on my mind all the morning. Where can she be?"

"Oh no, no, sir. Never fear! She'll be all safe somewheres or other. She'll just have gone wandering on into the town. She have been strange in her ways, poor thing! and we couldn't but see it, sir. But she can't have come to no harm. There's nothing to hurt her here-about."

Thus honest Polly, consolingly. But she was infected, too, by the terror in her master's white face.

"You don't know," said he tremulously, "what reason I have for uneasiness." He drew out from his pocket-book a torn scrap of paper with some writing on it. "I found this on the floor by her desk this morning. This is what alarmed me so before I went out, but I wouldn't say anything about it then."

Polly stared at the paper with eager curiosity, but the sharp, slanting writing puzzled her eyes, never quite at their ease with the alphabet in any shape. "Is it missus's writing?" she asked.

"Yes; see, she talks of being so wretched. Why, God knows! Her mind has been quite unhinged. That is the only explanation. And, you see, she says, 'It will not be long before this misery is at an end. I cannot live on as I am living. I will not.'"

"Lord, ha' mercy upon us!" ejaculated the woman, on whom the full force of her master's anxiety and alarm suddenly broke. Her round ruddy cheeks grew almost as white as his, and Lydia, who had been peeping and listening at the door, burst out crying, and began uttering a series of incoherent phrases.

"Hold your noise!" said Polly roughly. "There's troubles enough without you. Now look ye here, sir. I'll put on my bonnet and go right down into Whitford. You take a look along Whit Meadow up Duckwell way. I bet ten pounds she's there somewhere's about. She has taken to going about through the fields, hasn't she, Lydia? Oh, hold your noise, and try and do something to help, you whimpering fool!"

Polly's violent excitement and trepidation took a practical form, whilst the other woman was utterly helpless. She was bidden to stay at home and "receive missus," and tell her that master was come back, and beg her "to bide still in the house, until he should return."

"But I'm afraid she'll never come back!" sobbed Lydia. "I'm so frightened to stop here by myself."

"Ugh, you great silly! Haven't you got no feeling for the poor husband? He looks scared well-nigh to death, poor lad. And as for you, it ain't much you care what's become of missus. You never had a good word for her. You're only crying because you're a coward."

Meanwhile Algernon sat in the little dining-room, with a strange sensation, as if every muscle in his body had been turned into lead. He must get up, and go out as the woman had said. He must! But there he sat with that sensation of marvellous weight holding him down in his chair. The house was absolutely still. Lydia, unable to remain alone in the kitchen, had gone to stand at the front door and stare up and down the road. Thus she heard nothing of footsteps approaching the house at the back, coming hurriedly through the garden, and pausing at the threshold of the door, which was open.

Presently, after some muttered conversation, in which two or three voices took part, a man entered the house and came along the passage, looking, as he went, into the kitchen and finding no one. Just as he reached the door of the dining-room, Algernon came out and confronted him.

"There's been an accident, sir, I'm sorry to say," said the man. "The alarm was given up our way about an hour and a half ago. Somebody's fallen into the Whit. I'm very sorry, sir, but I'm afraid you must prepare for bad news."

Whilst he was still speaking, the house had filled with an ever-gathering crowd. People stood in the passage, peeping over each other's shoulders, and pushing to get a glimpse of Algernon. There were even faces pressed to the windows outside, and the garden was blocked up. Polly had come hurrying back from the town, and now elbowed her way through the crowd to her master. She soon cleared the passage of the throng of idlers who blocked it up, and shut them outside the door by main force. They still swarmed about the house and garden, both on the side of the road and that of Whit Meadow. And their numbers increased every minute. Polly pulled the man who had been spokesman into the dining-room, and bade him say what he had to say without further preamble. "It's no use 'preparing' him," she said, pointing to Algernon, who had sunk into a chair, and was holding his forehead with his hands; "you'll only make it worse. I'm afraid you can't tell him anything dreadfuller than he's got into his head already. Speak out!"

Thus requested, the man, a carpenter of Pudcombe village, told his tale. Some men, working in the fields about a mile above Whitford—half a mile, perhaps, from Ivy Lodge, had heard cries for help from the meadows near the river. He, the carpenter, happened to be passing along a field path from a farmhouse where he had been at work, and ran with the labourers down to the water's edge. There they saw David Powell, the Methodist preacher, wildly shouting for help, and with clothes dripping wet. He had waded waist-deep into the Whit to try to save some one who was drowning there, but in vain. He could not swim, and the current had carried the drowning person out of his reach. "You know," said the carpenter, "there are some ugly swirls and currents in the Whit, for all it looks so sluggish." A boat had been got out and manned, and had made all speed in the direction Powell pointed out. He insisted on accompanying them in his wet clothes. They searched the river for some time in vain. They had got as far as Duckwell Reach when they caught sight of a dark object close in shore. It was the form of a woman. Her clothes had caught in the broken stump of an old willow that grew half in the water; and she was thus held there,............