o doubt you'm feeling wisht about it, my dear.
But you must cut a loss like what your betters be often called to do. You
must take another, Jenny, and be large-minded, and remember that there's
better fish in the river than ever came out."

"Is Nicky in the river?" asked Mrs. White. "I'm powerful certain he ban't,
Aunt Maria."

"He's there," said the old woman, cheerfully. "Don't you worry about your
first. He'll rise at the Trump along of all of us. His Maker won't forget
even Nicky. And meantime he's just so peaceful under water as he would be
in the Yard. And when you think of the fiery nature of the man, what is
there better than peace you could wish him?"

So Jenny went home and her great idea grew upon her, till by noon she'd
built up her resolves and made ready for journeying.

And the very next day she was off and her house locked up, and a bit of
paper with writing on it fixed up on the door.

_Jenny White gone away for a bit. Please be kind to her
yellow cat._

II

A good deal under the weather and terrible sorry for herself, Jenny set
out to fetch over to Okehampton and see if her husband was alive or not.
And if he was, it looked harder than ever to understand why for he'd left
her. There weren't but one explanation as she could see, and that didn't
make her feel no brighter. He'd done a thing only a madman would have
done, which being so, he must be mad. She shed a good many tears on her
way to find the man when she reached that conclusion; but Nicky mad was
better than no Nicky at all in her opinion, and such was her faithful love
for the ugly little monkey that she held on and prayed to God in the train
all the way from Tavistock to Okehampton that Nicky might yet be saved
alive and be brought back to his right mind. Because Jenny knew folk went
mad and then recovered. So she was pretty cheerful again afore she
alighted off the train at Okehampton; and then she hired a trap down to
the 'White Hart' hotel, and drove out to Meldon Quarry with a fine trust
in her Maker. She left the trap in the vale and climbed over a fence and
began to look about her.

'Twas a great big place with scores of men to work nigh a mighty railway
bridge of steel that be thrown over the river valley and looks no more
than a thread seen up in the sky from below. And then, just when she began
to feel it was a pretty big task to find her husband among that dollop of
navvies and quarrymen, if she didn't run right on top of