aying that I lost her by a mere little two months! There is no
chance for me now in this world, and it makes me reckless--reckless!
Unless, indeed, anything should happen to the other one. She is
amiable enough; but if anything should happen to her--and I hear she is
ill--well, if it should, I should be free--and my fame, my happiness,
would be insured."

These were the last words that Fitzpiers uttered in his seat in front
of the timber-merchant. Unable longer to master himself, Melbury, the
skin of his face compressed, whipped away his spare arm from
Fitzpiers's waist, and seized him by the collar.

"You heartless villain--after all that we have done for ye!" he cried,
with a quivering lip. "And the money of hers that you've had, and the
roof we've provided to shelter ye! It is to me, George Melbury, that
you dare to talk like that!" The exclamation was accompanied by a
powerful swing from the shoulder, which flung the young man head-long
into the road, Fitzpiers fell with a heavy thud upon the stumps of some
undergrowth which had been cut during the winter preceding. Darling
continued her walk for a few paces farther and stopped.

"God forgive me!" Melbury murmured, repenting of what he had done. "He
tried me too sorely; and now perhaps I've murdered him!"

He turned round in the saddle and looked towards the spot on which
Fitzpiers had fallen. To his great surprise he beheld the surgeon rise
to his feet with a bound, as if unhurt, and walk away rapidly under the
trees.

Melbury listened till the rustle of Fitzpiers's footsteps died away.
"It might have been a crime, but for the mercy of Providence in
providing leaves for his fall," he said to himself. And then his mind
reverted to the words of Fitzpiers, and his indignation so mounted
within him that he almost wished the fall had put an end to the young
man there and then.

He had not ridden far when he discerned his own gray mare standing
under some bushes. Leaving Darling for a moment, Melbury went forward
and easily caught the younger animal, now disheartened at its freak.
He then made the pair of them fast to a tree, and turning back,
endeavored to find some trace of Fitzpiers, feeling pitifully that,
after all, he had gone further than he intended with the offender.

But though he threaded the wood hither and thither, his toes ploughing
layer after layer of the little horny scrolls that had once been
leaves, he could not find him. He stood still