I gathered from the doctor and the servants that the sacrilege had now become publicly known, and had caused much excitement. Wynne had evidently been slightly intoxicated when he committed it, and had taken no care to conceal the proofs that the grave had been tampered with. At the inquest the amulet had been identified and claimed by my mother.

It was some days before I got out, and then I went at once to the cottage. It was a lovely evening as I walked down Wilderness Road. It was not till I reached the little garden-gate that I began fully to feel how weak my illness had left me. The gate was half open, and I looked over into the garden, which was already forlorn and deserted. Some instinct told me she was not there. The little flower-beds looked shaggy, grass-grown, and uncared for. In the centre, among the geraniums, phlox-beds, and French marigolds, sat a dirty-white hen, clucking and calling a brood of dirty-white chickens. The box-bordered gravelled paths, which Wynne, in spite of his drunkenness, used to keep always so neat, were covered with leaves, shaken by the wind from the trees surrounding the garden. One of the dark green shutters was unfastened, and stood out at right-angles from the wall—a token of desertion. On the diamond panes of the upper windows, round which the long tendrils of grape-vines were drooping, the gorgeous sunset was reflected, making the glass gleam as though a hundred little fires were playing behind it. When I reached the door, the paint of which seemed far more cracked with the sun than it had looked a few weeks before, I found on knocking that the cottage was empty. I did not linger, but went at once into the town to inquire about her.

In place of giving me the information I was panting for, the whole town came cackling round me with comments on the organist and the sacrilege. I turned into the 'Fishing Smack' inn, a likely place to get what news was to be had, and found the asthmatical old landlord haranguing some fishermen who were drinking their ale on a settle.

'It's my b'lief,' said the old man, 'that Tom was arter somethink else besides that air jewelled cross. I'm eighty-five year old come next Dullingham fair, and I regleck as well as if it wur yisterdy when resur-rectionin' o' carpuses wur carried on in the old churchyard jes' like one o'clock, and the carpuses sent up to Lunnon reg'lar, and it's my 'pinion as that wur part o' Tom's game, dang 'im; and if I'd a 'ad my way arter the crouner's quest, he'd never a' bin buried in the very churchyard as he went and blast-phemed.'

'Where would you 'a buried 'im, then, Muster Lantoff?' asked a fisher-boy in a blue worsted jerkin.

'Buried 'im? why, at the cross-ruds, with a hedge-stake through his guts, to be sure. If there's a penny agin' 'im on that air slate' (pointing to a slate hung up on the door) 'there must be ten shillins, dang 'im.'

'You blear-eyed, ignorant old donkey,' I cried, coming suddenly upon him, 'what do you suppose he could have done with a dead body in these days? Here's your wretched ten shillings,—for which you'd sell all the corpses in Raxton churchyard.'

And I gave him half-a-sovereign, feeling, somehow, that I was doing honour to Winifred.

'Thankee for the money, Mister Hal, anyhow,' said the old creature. 'You was allus a liberal 'un, you was. But as to what Tom could 'a dun with the carpus, I'm allus heer'd that you may dew anythink with any-think, if you on'y send it carriage-paid to Lunnon,'

I left the house in anger and disgust. No tidings could I get of
Winifred in Raxton or Graylingham.