offered, the distance being so short and the roads dry. The
squire came rather farther into the dark with them than he need have
done, and wished Rosa good-night in a mysterious manner, slightly apart
from the rest.

When they were walking along Joshua said, with desperate attempt at
joviality, 'Rosa, what's going on?'

'O, I--' she began between a gasp and a bound. 'He--'

'Never mind--if it disturbs you.'

She was so excited that she could not speak connectedly at first, the
practised air which she had brought home with her having disappeared.
Calming herself she added, 'I am not disturbed, and nothing has happened.
Only he said he wanted to ask me _something_, some day; and I said never
mind that now. He hasn't asked yet, and is coining to speak to you about
it. He would have done so to-night, only I asked him not to be in a
hurry. But he will come to-morrow, I am sure!'

CHAPTER V

It was summer-time, six months later, and mowers and haymakers were at
work in the meads. The manor-house, being opposite them, frequently
formed a peg for conversation during these operations; and the doings of
the squire, and the squire's young wife, the curate's sister--who was at
present the admired of most of them, and the interest of all--met with
their due amount of criticism.

Rosa was happy, if ever woman could be said to be so. She had not learnt
the fate of her father, and sometimes wondered--perhaps with a sense of
relief--why he did not write to her from his supposed home in Canada. Her
brother Joshua had been presented to a living in a small town, shortly
after her marriage, and Cornelius had thereupon succeeded to the vacant
curacy of Narrobourne.

These two had awaited in deep suspense the discovery of their father's
body; and yet the discovery had not been made. Every day they expected a
man or a boy to run up from the meads with the intelligence; but he had
never come. Days had accumulated to weeks and months; the wedding had
come and gone: Joshua had tolled and read himself in at his new parish;
and never a shout of amazement over the millwright's remains.

But now, in June, when they were mowing the meads, the hatches had to be
drawn and the water let out of its channels for the convenience of the
mowers. It was thus that the discovery was made. A man, stooping low
with his scythe, caught a view of the culvert lengthwise, and saw
something entangled in the recently bared weeds of its bed. A