ted with his stick in the direction of the laundry.

"They are shut in there--the doctor and those whom he requires round
him," he said. "Let them be undisturbed; it is the only chance."

All things likely to be wanted had been conveyed to the laundry; and
they were shut in there, as Mr. Verner expressed it, with their fires
and their heat. On dragged the time. Anxious watchers were in the house,
in the yard, gathered round the back gate. The news had spread, and
gentlepeople, friends of the Verners, came hasting from their homes, and
pressed into Verner's Pride, and asked question upon question of Mr. and
Mrs. Verner, of everybody likely to afford an answer. Old Matthew Frost
stood outwardly calm and collected, full of inward trust, as a good man
should be. He had learned where to look for support in the darkest
trial. Mr. Verner in that night of sorrow seemed to treat him as a
brother.

One hour! Two hours! and still they plied their remedies, under the able
direction of Dr. West. All was of no avail, as the experienced physician
had told them. Life was extinct. Poor Rachel Frost was really dead!

CHAPTER V.

THE TALL GENTLEMAN IN THE LANE.

Apart from the horror of the affair, it was altogether attended with so
much mystery that that of itself would have kept the excitement alive.
What could have taken Rachel Frost near the pond at all? Allowing that
she had chosen that lonely road for her way home--which appeared
unlikely in the extreme--she must still have gone out of it to approach
the pond, must have walked partly across a field to gain it. Had her
path led close by it, it would have been a different matter: it might
have been supposed (unlikely still, though) that she had missed her
footing and fallen in. But unpleasant rumours were beginning to
circulate in the crowd. It was whispered that sounds of a contest, the
voices being those of a man and a woman, had been heard in that
direction at the time of the accident, or about the time; and these
rumours reached the ear of Mr. Verner.

For the family to think of bed, in the present state of affairs, or the
crowd to think of dispersing, would have been in the highest degree
improbable. Mr. Verner set himself to get some sort of solution first.
One told one tale; one, another: one asserted something else; another,
the exact opposite. Mr. Verner--and in saying Mr. Verner, we must
include all--was fairly puzzled. A notion had sprung up that Dinah Roy,