"I don't know, Master Charles. If I did there would be mischief, unless it was one of two."
"Ay, Will, but it ain't. You don't think it is Cuthbert?"
"No, no! He, forsooth! Father Mackworth knows, I believe, more than we do."
"You do not suspect him?"
"Certainly not. I did, but I don't now. I suspect he knows, as I said, more than we do. He has been speaking harshly to her about it."
They had arrived at the hill round which Charles suspected he had seen her pass the day before. It was impossible to pass round the promontory on horseback in the best of weathers; now doubly so. They would have to pass inland of it. They both pulled up their horses and looked. The steep slope of turf, the top of which, close over head, was hid by flying mists, trended suddenly downwards, and disappeared. Eight hundred feet below was the raging sea.
As they stood there, the same thought came across both of them. It was a dreadful place. They neither spoke at all, but spurred on faster, till the little grey village of Coombe, down at their feet, sheltered from the storm by the lofty hills around, opened to their view; and they pushed on down the steep rocky path.
No. No one had seen her yesterday at such a time. The streets would have been full of the miners coming from work; or, if she had come earlier, there would have been plenty of people to see her. It was a small place, and no stranger, they said, could ever pass through it unnoticed.
And, though they scoured the country far and wide, and though for months after the fishermen fished among the quiet bays beneath the cliffs in fear, lest they should find there something which should be carried in silent awe up the village, and laid quietly in the old churchyard, beneath the elm; yet Ellen was gone—gone from their ken like a summer cloud. They thought it a pious fraud to tell Densil that she was gone—with some excuse, I forget what, but which satisfied him. In a conclave held over the matter, Cuthbert seemed only surprised and shocked, but evidently knew nothing of the matter. Father Mackworth said that he expected something of the kind for some little time, and William held his peace. The gossips in the village laid their heads together, and shook them. There was but one opinion there.
"Never again shall she put garland on;
Instead of it she'll wear sad cypress now,
And bitter elder broken from the bough."