ite gone before they were out
of the water."

"Ah! I thought as much when I hauled 'em up. And Mrs. Wildeve?"

"She is as well as can be expected. The doctor had her put between
blankets, for she was almost as wet as they that had been in the
river, poor young thing. You don't seem very dry, reddleman."

"Oh, 'tis not much. I have changed my things. This is only a little
dampness I've got coming through the rain again."

"Stand by the fire. Mis'ess says you be to have whatever you want,
and she was sorry when she was told that you'd gone away."

Venn drew near to the fireplace, and looked into the flames in an
absent mood. The steam came from his leggings and ascended the
chimney with the smoke, while he thought of those who were upstairs.
Two were corpses, one had barely escaped the jaws of death, another
was sick and a widow. The last occasion on which he had lingered by
that fireplace was when the raffle was in progress; when Wildeve
was alive and well; Thomasin active and smiling in the next room;
Yeobright and Eustacia just made husband and wife, and Mrs. Yeobright
living at Blooms-End. It had seemed at that time that the then
position of affairs was good for at least twenty years to come. Yet,
of all the circle, he himself was the only one whose situation had not
materially changed.

While he ruminated a footstep descended the stairs. It was the nurse,
who brought in her hand a rolled mass of wet paper. The woman was
so engrossed with her occupation that she hardly saw Venn. She took
from a cupboard some pieces of twine, which she strained across the
fireplace, tying the end of each piece to the firedog, previously
pulled forward for the purpose, and, unrolling the wet papers, she
began pinning them one by one to the strings in a manner of clothes
on a line.

"What be they?" said Venn.

"Poor master's bank-notes," she answered. "They were found in his
pocket when they undressed him."

"Then he was not coming back again for some time?" said Venn.

"That we shall never know," said she.

Venn was loth to depart, for all on earth that interested him lay
under this roof. As nobody in the house had any more sleep that
night, except the two who slept for ever, there was no reason why
he should not remain. So he retired into the niche of the fireplace
where he had used to sit, and there he continued, watching the steam
from the double row of bank-notes as they waved backwards and forwards
in the draught of