m."

"I'll come with you," said Melbury.

She begged him not to hinder himself; but he insisted, for he saw a
peculiar and rigid gloom in her face over and above her uneasiness, and
did not like the look of it. Telling the men he would be with them
again soon, he walked beside her into the turnpike-road, and partly up
the hill whence she had watched Fitzpiers the night before across the
Great White Hart or Blackmoor Valley. They halted beneath a half-dead
oak, hollow, and disfigured with white tumors, its roots spreading out
like accipitrine claws grasping the ground. A chilly wind circled
round them, upon whose currents the seeds of a neighboring lime-tree,
supported parachute-wise by the wing attached, flew out of the boughs
downward like fledglings from their nest. The vale was wrapped in a
dim atmosphere of unnaturalness, and the east was like a livid curtain
edged with pink. There was no sign nor sound of Fitzpiers.

"It is no use standing here," said her father. "He may come home fifty
ways...why, look here!--here be Darling's tracks--turned homeward and
nearly blown dry and hard! He must have come in hours ago without your
seeing him."

"He has not done that," said she.

They went back hastily. On entering their own gates they perceived
that the men had left the wagons, and were standing round the door of
the stable which had been appropriated to the doctor's use. "Is there
anything the matter?" cried Grace.

"Oh no, ma'am. All's well that ends well," said old Timothy Tangs.
"I've heard of such things before--among workfolk, though not among
your gentle people--that's true."

They entered the stable, and saw the pale shape of Darling standing in
the middle of her stall, with Fitzpiers on her back, sound asleep.
Darling was munching hay as well as she could with the bit in her
month, and the reins, which had fallen from Fitzpiers's hand, hung upon
her neck.

Grace went and touched his hand; shook it before she could arouse him.
He moved, started, opened his eyes, and exclaimed, "Ah, Felice!...Oh,
it's Grace. I could not see in the gloom. What--am I in the saddle?"

"Yes," said she. "How do you come here?"

He collected his thoughts, and in a few minutes stammered, "I was
riding along homeward through the vale, very, very sleepy, having been
up so much of late. When I came opposite Holywell spring the mare
turned her head that way, as if she wanted to drink. I let her go in,
and she drank