said little Miss Turtle, the governess.
She and her pupils had been watching
Veronica unwinkingly all the afternoon,
as their custom was.

The choir of St. Gildas dispersed. The
Sheardowns drove away in their little pony-
carriage, carrying with them Herbert
Snowe, who usually stayed with them on
Saturday evenings. Miss Turtle took her
pupils, one on each arm, and her grey cloak
and shabby hat with its black feather
disappeared down the lane. The vicar, with
his ward and his daughter, walked in the
opposite direction towards their home.

The nearest way to the vicarage house
was across St. Gildas's churchyard. But
the melted snow lay in death-cold pools
between the swelling grave-mounds, and
although the lanes afforded no good walking
in the present state of the weather,
they were yet rather better than the way
by the churchyard.

Mention has been made of a by-road
through the village from Shipley Magna
which skirted the garden wall of the vicarage.
Mr. Levincourt and the two girls
had not gone many paces down this by-
road, when they perceived through the fast-
gathering dusk a figure, which had evidently
been on the watch for them, start and run
towards them very swiftly.

"I do believe it is Jemmy Sack!"
exclaimed Maud Desmond.

Jemmy Sack it was, who presently came
to a sudden stop in front of the vicar, and
began a breathless and incoherent speech.

"Dunnot ye be frighted, please sir, Joe
Dowsett says. They ha'n't a took him
into the house, please sir. And it's the
same un as I seed tumble off afore. On'y
this here time he's in a reg'lar swound
like. But Joe Dowsett says as ye bain't
to be frighted, nor yet the young ladies
nayther, please sir."

Long before the combined cross-examination
of the vicar and the young ladies
had succeeded in eliciting any explicit
statement from Jemmy, they arrived at the
garden door, and then the matter to a
certain extent explained itself.

A man in a scarlet hunting coat thickly
crusted with mud lay on his back in the
road beneath the garden wall, and close by
a heap of flint stones piled up for the use
of the road-menders. On to these he had
apparently been flung, for his face was cut,
and a thin stream of blood trickled slowly
down his forehead.

The prostrate man was totally insensible.
His head was supported on the knee of Joe
Dowsett, the vicar's gardener, groom, and
general factotum, who was endeavouring
to pour some brandy down his throat. A
carter, in a smock-frock, held a handsome
horse by the bridle. Three of the village
boys who had been practising in the schoolroom
stood at a little distance looking on,
and two frightened women-servants, with
their aprons huddled round their shivering
shoulders, peeped nervously from the
garden door, and plied Joe Dowsett with
shrill questions, of which he took no notice
whatever.

A clamour of voices arose as soon as the
vicar was perceived: but a few words will
suffice to put the reader in possession of
the facts of the case. The fallen man was
the same gentleman whom Jemmy had
seen thrown earlier in the day. The day's
sport had terminated at a considerable
distance from Shipley Magna. The gentleman
was a stranger, had probably missed
his way, and gone by roundabout roads.
He had evidently at last been making for
Shipley Magna, having struck into
Bassett's-lane, as the by-road was called. His
horse and he were both tired out, and he
had begun to feel the effects of his first fall
more severely than he had felt them in the
heat of the chase and at the beginning of the
day. The carter had perceived the gentleman's
horse stumble, and at the same instant
the boys returning from the school-house
had appeared shouting and whooping at
the end of the lane. In a moment the
gentleman had been pitched heavily off
his horse, and had fallen on the heap of
flint stones. The carter couldn't say for
sure, but he believed that the horse
stumbled before the lads startled him.
And now what was to be done? This
question was put by Joe Dowsett, looking
up at his master with the brandy bottle
in his hand.

The first thing to be done was to send
for a doctor. Mr. Plew would probably
not have reached his own home yet.
Jemmy Sack was despatched to fetch him,
and set off running at a famous rate, throwing
out his long legs, and followed by the
other boys, to all of whom the occasion
seemed to be one of intense and concentrated
ecstasy.

But pending Mr. Plew's arrival, the
swooning man could not lie there, with the
night falling fast, and a bitter wind blowing
from the marshes, that was fit, Joe
Dowsett said, to freeze the very marrow
in your bones.

There was no other house at hand. The