put the mare to this ould shandheradan. It's not very fit for a
lady, bad manners to it! but it'll be betther nor the slippery roads
undher yer feet."

I do not know how the drive passed. I remember saying once to Pat,

"Are they quite, quite sure that Mr. Hollingford was--was--"

"No indeed, miss," was the answer, "sorra sure at all. They do say he
was in the coach, but no wan seen him dead, as far as I can hear tell."

I made the man set me down at the farm gate, and walked up the avenue
just as the early moonlight was beginning to light up the frosty world.
As I came near the door, I fancied I heard crying and wailing; but it
was only Mopsie singing in the hall. Behind the parlour window I saw
Jane stepping about briskly in the firelight, arranging the table for
tea. All was quiet and peaceful as when I had left the place two hours
before.

CHAPTER V.

The children followed me to my room, wondering where I could have been
so late. I said I was tired, and begged them to leave me alone. Then I
locked my door, and a solitary hour of anguish passed. The fever of
uncertainty would not let me weep; I suffered without much sign, but in
such a degree as I had never dreamed of before.

There was something horrible that I had to realise and could not. John
hurt and dying away from his home, without one by to comfort him,
without his mother's blessing, without a whisper to tell him that I had
loved him and would mourn for him all my life! John vanished from the
earth--lost to us for ever! The sickly moonlight fell about me with a
ghastly peace, and the horror of death froze my heart.

Tea-hour arrived, and the girls knocked at the door. Mrs. Hollingford
came to me, questioning me anxiously, and pressing my burning temples
between her cool palms; and there I lay under her hands, crushed with my
cruel secret. I could not tell it. Not that night. When the worst must
be known it would be my place to help them all in their agony; and was I
fit for such a task now? Besides, there was still a hope, and I clung to
it with wild energy.

They left me for the night, thinking I slept, but when the clock struck
five I wrapped myself in a cloak, and went out and down the avenue. I
was half afraid of the ghostly trees, so black against the snow, but I
was more in terror of the melancholy corners of my own room, the
solitary light, the dreary ashes in the grate. I walked as far as the
gate, and even ventured out on the road,