Lower down the river an ox or two were found, while news came of other carcases, miles away, stranded in bends where gravel and mud had half-buried them.
But there was a good deal of water still in the river, and a threatening of another rise.
At Mr Draycott’s Mark Frayne still lay insensible, but he seemed to sleep calmly enough, and was beginning to take the food given to him, while the doctors both agreed that there was no fear of a relapse; the only trouble was—What would the young man’s mental state be when he recovered from his long stupor?
Day after day glided by. Mr and Mrs Frayne reached the house, Mark’s father evidently painfully ill of the complaint which had taken him from his bleak Devonshire vicarage to the warmer climate and change of the South of France and the Riviera.
The news had been a very great shock, and the doctor looked at him anxiously as he went to his son’s room, so weak that he had to be assisted by Jerry and the weeping mother.
They accepted Mr Draycott’s hospitality and stayed, eager to be near their son, while longing to hear tidings of the discovery of their nephew—tidings that did not come.
Jerry stole away more than once to try and make out the exact place where he had seen Richard plunge in, and returned, shaking his head, for it was impossible.
Day by day he grew more morose, for fragments of the chatter reached him—petty talk, which blackened the young baronet’s fame; while, worst stab of all, he read in the little local paper, where, in a long article concerning the trouble of “our respected townsman, Mr Draycott,” it was said that the principal in the terrible tragedy had been guilty of that rash act to avoid the punishment likely to befall him consequent upon the assault he had committed and his connection with a monetary scandal.
“And if I go and punch the head of him as wrote that, they’ll have me up before the magistrates,” said Jerry; “and they call this a free land!”
Three weeks had passed, and Mark Frayne was beginning to show signs of returning consciousness, when, towards evening, the police inspector came to the house to ask to see Mr Draycott.