e best, and came home with the brush at her pommel.

"Why do they look at me so strangely, father?" she asked. "Old Squire
Thornton, when he welcomed my return to the hunt, held my hand a whole
minute in his, and it was as if he were about to speak, for he swallowed
once or twice and then turned away. And Doctor Glebe would not speak to
me at all, and his face was set as a mask, though I saw that he was
watching me strangely all the time. Have I changed? Am I not the same
Betty I used to be?"

"The same, only a little thinner, my darling," her father answered, and
his eyes filled with tears.

He too had grown curiously sad of late, and followed his daughter with
wistful eyes.

"Father," she said one day, "to-morrow you know is our wedding-day. John
will come home, he must return to-night. I know that he will. I shall
wait up till the clock strikes twelve, but if he does not come (and of
course no one can tell how long business may detain him, can they?), one
thing, dear father: will you take Mary to church, even though I should
not be there, and marry her? She might wear my wedding-gown. To please
me, father, to please me?"

"Anything, anything to please you, my own child," said Mr. Ives in a
choked voice.

All day Betty wandered in the garden; they watched her wistfully, her
head was raised, always listening--listening to every sound.

The hours passed, evening came, the night fell. Betty had thrown wide
the casement. Her father and Mary Jones, crouching over the fire, had no
heart to speak to her, or warn her that the night was cold.

A wild stormy wind swayed the branches of the apple-trees, surging and
roaring as it rushed over the downs; the candles flickered and burned
low, and from them dropped those strange waxen off-shoots that old women
call winding-sheets.

At last the church-bell struck twelve, slowly, awfully.

Betty was listening still, her head raised, her finger on her lip.

"Hush!" she said, with a strange smile. "Do you hear the white horse's
hoofs?"

They listened. Distinctly on the ear came the sound of a horse
galloping, coming nearer and nearer, passing the door, on and on without
pause, the sound of the hoofs growing faint and fainter till lost in the
far distance.

Betty held out her arms. "Mary!" she said. "Mary!" Her voice was a
strange harsh whisper, out of which all tone had passed. "Mary, he
gallops away."

CHAPTER VIII.

After the lapse of another three days, it