"But there are fifty cottages up there, scattered over the space of miles."
"Well, sir, it is in the whitish stone one, the nighest but three to the big oak, you know; which his name it is Norriss, as you can find him by that. But, law, sir! he can't tell you no more nor I have," said Mrs. Winterose.
Before she quite finished her speech Mr. Berners ran down stairs and out of the cottage, and bent his steps to the quarryman's hut.
It happened just as the old nurse had foretold.
The man could tell Mr. Berners nothing but this: that Miss Tabby had come to his house just about daylight, having her clothing wet and draggled nearly up to her waist with mud and water, and shaking as with an ague, and sinking with fatigue.
He having neither wife nor daughter, nor any other woman about the house, had no proper dry clothes to offer her; but he made her sit by the fire, while he questioned her as to the manner in which she came to be so much exposed.
She answered him only by senseless lamentations and floods of tears.
When her chill had gone off a high fever came on, and, the quarryman explained, he knew that she was going to be ill, so he offered to take her home; and, partly by leading, and partly by lugging, he had contrived to carry her safe to her father's cottage, which she reached in a state of fever and delirium.
This was all the information that Mr. Berners could get from the honest quarryman, who would willingly have given him more had he possessed it.
Lyon Berners went back to Black Hall, where he found Clement and Beatrix Pendleton waiting for him in the parlor, and wondering at his prolonged absence.