always to have an ostensible reason for seeing Gabriel in
order to protect her character, she was not at all pleased that he had
not turned her excuse for calling on him into an actual fact. It is true
that Gabriel presented himself late in the afternoon and requested to
see the invalid, but instead of taking him up to the sickroom, Bell
whirled the curate into a small back parlour and closed the door, in
order, as she remarked, 'to have it out with him.'

'Now, then,' said she, planting her back against the door, 'what do you
mean by treating me like a bit of dirt?'

'You mean that I did not come round last night, Bell?'

'Yes, I do. I told mother you would visit her. I said to Jacob Jarper as
I'd come to ask you to see mother, and you go and make me out a liar by
not turning up. What do you mean?'

'I was ill and couldn't keep my promise,' said Gabriel, shortly.

'Ill!' said Bell, looking him up and down; 'well, you do look ill.
You've been washed and wrung out till you're limp as a rag. White in the
face, black under the eyes! What have you been doing with yourself, I'd
like to know. You were all right when I left you last night.'

'The weather affected my nerves,' explained Gabriel, with a weary sigh,
passing his thin hand across his anxious face. 'I felt that it was
impossible for me to sit in a close room and talk to a sick woman, so I
went round to the stables where I keep my horse, and took him out in
order to get a breath of fresh air.'

'What! You rode out at that late hour, in all that storm?'

'The storm came on later. I went out almost immediately after you left,
and got back at half-past ten. It wasn't so very late.'

'Well, of all mad things!' said Bell, grimly. 'It's easy seen, Mr
Gabriel Pendle, how badly you want a wife at your elbow. Where did you
go?'

'I rode out on to Southberry Heath,' replied Gabriel, with some
hesitation.

'Lord ha' mercy! Where Jentham's corpse was found?'

The curate shuddered. 'I didn't see any corpse,' he said, painfully and
slowly. 'Instead of keeping to the high road, I struck out
cross-country. It was only this morning that I heard of the unfortunate
man's untimely end.'

'You didn't meet anyone likely to have laid him out?'

'No! I met no one. I felt too ill to notice passers-by, but the ride did
me good, and I feel much better this morning.'

'You don't look better,' said Bell, with another searching glance. 'One
would think you had killed the man your