Of course the colonel started off at once, and when he caught sight of the hut he noticed that the goats were unmilked and bleating pitifully round the door. As he drew nearer, the jackdaw and magpie came hopping out, cawing with mouths wide open; and then he jumped off his horse, tied him up, and knocked with his whip against the pole which formed the door-post. There was no answer, and he went in. The idiot was lying as he had seen him on the previous day, but the troubled look was gone from his face; and across him with her head close to his lay his mother, while the squirrel with his little bright eyes was sitting up by the heads of both. The woman's skirts were dripping wet, as though she had walked through dewy grass, and she lay quite still. The colonel laid his hand on the man's forehead; and it was quite cold. Then he took the woman's hand and that also was cold. He had seen such sights too often in the wars to be dismayed at finding himself alone with the dead. "He must have died at sunset," he said to himself, "and she walked over to Bracefort in the night in distraction and came back to die before sunrise. No wonder, after such a strain as carrying him all those miles." He left the two where they lay, and was about to put the door in its place and go; but the goats clamoured so loud that he stopped to milk them, which he had learned to do in India, and finding the meat that he had brought on the previous day untouched in the basket, he gave some scraps to the magpie and the jackdaw, and ferreted about till he had discovered some nuts in the hut for the squirrel. Then he set the door in its place and rode straight for Bracefort.
When he reached the hill-top he saw some one riding upward; and galloping down soon found himself face to face with Lady Eleanor. In spite of what she had said on the day before she seemed very happy to see him twenty-four hours earlier than she had appointed, and it was not for some minutes that they came to the matter which had brought them together again. Then Colonel George told her what he had seen at the hut, though he found it hard to tell her anything so sad at such a time. She listened with many tears, but when she had recovered herself somewhat, she told Colonel George that there was one person more who must hear the story of Lucy Dart at once.
So when they came to Bracefort they went to see old Sally Dart, who had become weaker again in the last few days, and had taken to her bed. She brightened up as they came in, and before either of them could say a word, bade them, as if she knew for what they were come, to tell them about her Jan. So they told her how he had fallen in fair fight with the French, among the rear-guard, which had covered itself with glory in the retreat; and she said that it was well. And they told her how Lucy his wife had stuck to him faithfully through all the hardship of war, that she had carried his boy to the end, when men were dying all round of fatigue and despair, and had brought him out alive, by her patience and courage, though injured for life; and that she had devoted herself wholly to him in the years that followed and died from grief when he died. They kept back from her any more than this lest they should grieve her, but old Sally was satisfied without asking questions, for which indeed she had little strength, but said that it was well, and that she would now go in peace. Then she wished them both good-bye and hoped they might live long and happily together, though they had told her nothing of what had passed between themselves; and those were the last words that she spoke, for she was stricken for the second time that evening and after lingering for a day and a night departed in peace, as she had said.
So there were three graves dug in the little churchyard; and grandmother, mother and son were buried together, so that the mourners for old Sally did honour also to the two whom they had treated as outcasts. The goats, the old pony, the magpie, the jackdaw and the squirrel were all brought down at the same time and made over to Elsie; and the little drummer's coat still lies in the glass case at Bracefort Hall.
But it was all many, many years ago; and there are few now living in Ashacombe village who remember to have heard from their parents the story of the witch of Cossacombe. There are many more monuments now in the churches both at Ashacombe and Fitzdenys than there were then; but those who read from them of George, Lord Fitzdenys, who fought in the Peninsula, at Waterloo, and at Maheidpore, and of Eleanor his beloved wife, think little or know nothing of the manner in which they were brought together. Still less do they know of the part played in the matter by John Brimacott, sometime of the Light Dragoons, who died in their household after forty years of good and faithful service. Those again who read an inscription to the memory of General Sir Richard Bracefort, Colonel of the 116th Lancers, who fought in the Punjaub, cannot tell that this was once little Dick, who was lost on the moor, nor that Elizabeth his widowed sister, whose memory also is preserved in Ashacombe church, was once little Elsie who was lost with him. But folks still pause to look at the tablet which records the death of Private John Dart in the retreat to Corunna, and of Lucy his wife, who after his fall carried her son of nine years old to the British ships, and having devoted the rest of her life to the care of him, who by God's visitation could take no care for himself, was found dead upon his body when he died.
THE END