uldn't
take her up myself; I'm goin' that way, and she's a slow traveller."

"An' then Dan'l can go straight up home with me," said Mrs Wishing,
"and we can drop in as we pass an' see Mrs White, poor soul. She
hadn't ought to be alone."

Before nightfall everyone knew the sad tidings. James White had been
shot by poachers, and Daniel Wishing had found him lying dead in the
woods.

As the days went on, the excitement which stirred the whole village
increased rather than lessened, for not even the oldest inhabitant could
remember such a tragical event. Apart from the sadness of it, and the
desolate condition of the widow, poor Jem's many virtues made it
impressive and lamentable. Everyone had something to say in his praise,
no one remembered anything but good about him; he was a brave chap, and
one of the right sort, said the men, when they talked of it in the
public-house; he was a good husband, said the women, steady and sober,
fond of his wife, a pattern to others. They shook their heads and
sighed mournfully; it was strange as well as pitiful that Jem White
should a been took. "There might a been _some_ as we could mention as
wouldn't a been so much missed."

Then came the funeral; the bunch of white lilac, still fresh, which he
had brought from Cuddingham, was put on Jem's newly-made grave, and his
widow, passing silently through the people gathered in the churchyard,
toiled patiently back to her lonely home.

They watched the solitary figure as it showed black against the steep
chalky road in the distance.

"Yon's an afflicted woman," said one, "for all she carries herself so
high under it."

"She's the only widder among all the Whites hereabouts," remarked Mrs
Pinhorn. "We needn't call her `Mrs White on the hill' no longer, poor
soul."

"It's a mercy she's got the child," said another neighbour, "if the Lord
spares it to her."

"The christening's to be on Sunday," added a third. "I do wonder if
she'll call it that outlandish name _now_."

There was not much time to wonder, for Sunday soon came, and the Widow
White, as she was to be called henceforth, was at the church, stern,
sad, and calm, with her child in her arms. It was an April morning,
breezy and soft; the uncertain sunshine darted hither and thither, now
touching the newly turned earth of Jem's grave, and now peering through
the church window to rest on the tiny face of his little daughter in the
rector's arms at the font. All the vi