hree-quarters
of a mile to walk--through the village, down-hill by the lane, past the
fir plantation where her father had been found murdered, and a little
way along the high-road--before she would reach her own park gate. The
Rector, like all strong men, was very tender and pitiful to the weak.
The thought of her feeling nervous and frightened in the darkness of the
lane was terrible to him; he felt as if she ought to be guarded and
guided throughout life by the fearless and the strong.

He walked down the street--it was a long straggling street such as often
forms the main thoroughfare of a country village--but he saw nothing of
Enid. At the end of the street were some better-built houses, with
gardens; then came the Rectory and the church. He paused instinctively
at the churchyard gate. Surely he saw something moving amongst the tombs
over there by the railed-in plot of ground that marked the vault, in
which lay the mortal remains of Sydney and Marion Vane? Had she gone
there? Was it Enid's slender form that crouched beside the railings in
the attitude of helpless sorrow and despair?

The Rector did not lose a moment in finding out. He threw open the gate,
dashed down the pathway, and was scarcely astonished to discover that
his fancy was correct. It was Enid Vane who had found her way to her
parents' grave, and had slipped down upon the frosted grass, half
kneeling, half lying against the iron rails.

One glance, and Evandale's heart gave a leap of terror. Had she fainted,
or was she dead? It was no warm, conscious, breathing woman whom he had
found--it was a rigid image of death, as stiff, as sightless, as
inanimate as the corpse that he had left behind. He bent down over her,
felt her pulse, and examined the pupils of her eyes. He had had some
medical training before he came to Beechfield, and his knowledge of
physiological details told him that this was no common faint--that the
girl was suffering from some strange cataleptic or nervous seizure, for
which ordinary remedies would be of no avail.

The Rectory garden opened into the churchyard. Maurice Evandale had not
a moment's hesitation in deciding what to do. He lifted the strangely
rigid, strangely heavy figure in his arms, and made his way along the
shadowy churchyard pathway to the garden gate. The great black yews
looked grim and ghostly as he left them behind and strode into his own
domain, where the flowers were all dead, and the leafless branches of