He does not wait for her to speak, but asks excitedly:—

“What’s the matter, mother?”

The question is mechanical—he almost anticipates the answer, or its nature.

“Oh, my son, my son! As I told ye. It was the canwyll corph!”


Volume Two—Chapter Four.

“The Flower of Love-Lies-Bleeding.”

There is a crowd collected round the farmhouse of Abergann. Not an excited, or noisy one; instead, the people composing it are of staid demeanour, with that formal solemnity observable on the faces of those at a funeral.

And a funeral it is, or soon to be. For, inside there is a chamber of death; a coffin with a corpse—that of her, who, had she lived, would have been Jack Wingate’s wife.