which had contained so much love and so much hatred, such
stern self-sacrifice and such deadly revenge, had ceased to beat, now
the worker's work was done.

CHAPTER XLII

THE RETURN

Master Courage Toogood had long ago given up all thought of waiting for
the mistress. He had knocked repeatedly at the door of the cottage, from
behind the thick panels of which he had heard loud and--he
thought--angry voices, speaking words which he could not, however, quite
understand.

No answer had come to his knocking and tired with the excitement of the
day, fearful, too, at the thought of the lonely walk which now awaited
him, he chose to believe that mayhap he had either misunderstood his
master's orders, or that Sir Marmaduke himself had been mistaken when he
thought the mistress back at the cottage.

These surmises were vastly to Master Courage Toogood's liking, whose
name somewhat belied his timid personality. Swinging his lantern and
striving to keep up his spirits by the aid of a lusty song, he
resolutely turned his steps towards home.

The whole landscape seemed filled with eeriness: the events of the day
had left their impress on this dark November night, causing the sighs of
the gale to seem more spectral and weird than usual, and the dim outline
of the trees with their branches turned away from the coastline, to
seem like unhappy spirits with thin, gaunt arms stretched dejectedly out
toward the unresponsive distance.

Master Toogood tried not to think of ghosts, nor of the many stories of
pixies and goblins which are said to take a malicious pleasure in the
timorousness of mankind, but of a truth he nearly uttered a cry of
terror, and would have fallen on his knees in the mud, when a dark
object quite undistinguishable in the gloom suddenly loomed before him.

Yet this was only the portly figure of Master Pyot, the petty constable,
who seemed to be mounting guard just outside the cottage, and who was
vastly amused at Toogood's pusillanimity. He entered into converse with
the young man--no doubt he, too, had been feeling somewhat lonely in the
midst of this darkness, which was peopled with unseen shadows. Master
Courage was ready enough to talk. He had acquired some of Master Busy's
eloquence on the subject of secret investigations, and the mystery which
had gained an intensity this afternoon, through the revelations of the
old Quakeress, was an all-engrossing one to all.

The attention which Pyot vouchsaf