Or the need so great as to-day.
A. A. P.
The Rev. Mr. Cave and the good Dr. Kerr, both devoted friends of Tudor Hereward, had promised him to leave nothing untried that might lead to a clew to trace the fate of the missing women. For—to reach the truth more promptly and effectually—it was deemed highly important to institute an exhaustive investigation into the movements of both the lost ones, from the day of their disappearance.
One of them lay in her grave, in the village church-yard; and the other had vanished.
But which was the dead and which was the living, no human being at Frosthill could prove.
The negroes and the neighbors had identified the body thrown up by the spring flood from the bed of the creek and found in the ravine as that of young Mrs. Tudor Hereward; but they had identified it only by the clothing and by the long, black, curling hair—only by these; for “decay’s effacing finger” had blotted out every feature beyond recognition.
And this held good for the truth until old Adah declared in the most solemn manner her conviction that the remains were those of the poor gypsy girl Lucille, giving strong reasons to support her statement.
Lucille was dressed in a suit of young Mrs. Hereward’s clothes, which had been bestowed on her by that lady.
Lucille had left Adah’s hut that fatal night, in company with her ruffian husband, with whom she had ventured to remonstrate on his robbing the poor old woman of the goods sent her by Mrs. Hereward; and they had gone away quarreling until they were out of hearing; soon after which, and at about the time they might have reached the point where the path through the woods passed over the bridge crossing the creek, a piercing shriek rang through the air followed by another and another, startling the bed-ridden old woman in the hut and filling her soul with terror.
Then all was still as death.