day or two
after there was an inquest; but the body was unrecognizable. Fish and
flood had been busy with the millwright; he had no watch or marked
article which could be identified; and a verdict of the accidental
drowning of a person unknown settled the matter.

As the body was found in Narrobourne parish, there it had to be buried.
Cornelius wrote to Joshua, begging him to come and read the service, or
to send some one; he himself could not do it. Rather than let in a
stranger Joshua came, and silently scanned the coroner's order handed him
by the undertaker:--

'I, Henry Giles, Coroner for the Mid-Division of Outer Wessex, do hereby
order the Burial of the Body now shown to the Inquest Jury as the Body of
an Adult Male Person Unknown . . . ,' etc.

Joshua Halborough got through the service in some way, and rejoined his
brother Cornelius at his house. Neither accepted an invitation to lunch
at their sister's; they wished to discuss parish matters together. In
the afternoon she came down, though they had already called on her, and
had not expected to see her again. Her bright eyes, brown hair, flowery
bonnet, lemon-coloured gloves, and flush beauty, were like an irradiation
into the apartment, which they in their gloom could hardly bear.

'I forgot to tell you,' she said, 'of a curious thing which happened to
me a month or two before my marriage--something which I have thought may
have had a connection with the accident to the poor man you have buried
to-day. It was on that evening I was at the manor-house waiting for you
to fetch me; I was in the winter-garden with Albert, and we were sitting
silent together, when we fancied we heard a cry. We opened the door, and
while Albert ran to fetch his hat, leaving me standing there, the cry was
repeated, and my excited senses made me think I heard my own name. When
Albert came back all was silent, and we decided that it was only a
drunken shout, and not a cry for help. We both forgot the incident, and
it never has occurred to me till since the funeral to-day that it might
have been this stranger's cry. The name of course was only fancy, or he
might have had a wife or child with a name something like mine, poor
man!'

When she was gone the brothers were silent till Cornelius said, 'Now mark
this, Joshua. Sooner or later she'll know.'

'How?'

'From one of us. Do you think human hearts are iron-cased safes, that
you suppose we can keep this secret for ever