about here?" he demanded. "Aha! are you
there, Miles Coverdale? You have been turning night into day since you
left us, I reckon; and so you find it quite natural to come prowling
about the house at this time o' night, frightening my old woman out of
her wits, and making her disturb a tired man out of his best nap. In
with you, you vagabond, and to bed!"

"Dress yourself quickly, Foster," said I. "We want your assistance."

I could not, for the life of me, keep that strange tone out of my
voice. Silas Foster, obtuse as were his sensibilities, seemed to feel
the ghastly earnestness that was conveyed in it as well as
Hollingsworth did. He immediately withdrew his head, and I heard him
yawning, muttering to his wife, and again yawning heavily, while he
hurried on his clothes. Meanwhile I showed Hollingsworth a delicate
handkerchief, marked with a well-known cipher, and told where I had
found it, and other circumstances, which had filled me with a suspicion
so terrible that I left him, if he dared, to shape it out for himself.
By the time my brief explanation was finished, we were joined by Silas
Foster in his blue woollen frock.

"Well, boys," cried he peevishly, "what is to pay now?"

"Tell him, Hollingsworth," said I.

Hollingsworth shivered perceptibly, and drew in a hard breath betwixt
his teeth. He steadied himself, however, and, looking the matter more
firmly in the face than I had done, explained to Foster my suspicions,
and the grounds of them, with a distinctness from which, in spite of my
utmost efforts, my words had swerved aside. The tough-nerved yeoman,
in his comment, put a finish on the business, and brought out the
hideous idea in its full terror, as if he were removing the napkin from
the face of a corpse.

"And so you think she's drowned herself?" he cried. I turned away my
face.

"What on earth should the young woman do that for?" exclaimed Silas,
his eyes half out of his head with mere surprise. "Why, she has more
means than she can use or waste, and lacks nothing to make her
comfortable, but a husband, and that's an article she could have, any
day. There's some mistake about this, I tell you!"

"Come," said I, shuddering; "let us go and ascertain the truth."

"Well, well," answered Silas Foster; "just as you say. We'll take the
long pole, with the hook at the end, that serves to get the bucket out
of the draw-well when the rope is broken. With that, and a couple of
long-handled