g_," she said to herself for
the hundredth time, as the light penetrated. "Was _that_ only seven
striking--_seven_--impossible!"

She sat up haggard and restless, hardly able to bear the thought of the
hours that must pass before she could see Aldous--put all to the touch.

Suddenly she remembered Hurd--then old Patton.

"He was dying last night," she thought, in her moral torment--her
passion to get away from herself. "Is he gone? This is the hour when old
people die--the dawn. I will go and see--go at once."

She sprang up. To baffle this ache within her by some act of repentance,
of social amends, however small, however futile--to propitiate herself,
if but by a hairbreadth--this, no doubt, was the instinct at work. She
dressed hastily, glad of the cold, glad of the effort she had to make
against the stiffness of her own young bones--glad of her hunger and
faintness, of everything physically hard that had to be fought and
conquered.

In a very short time she had passed quietly downstairs and through the
hall, greatly to the amazement of William, who opened the front door for
her. Once in the village road the damp raw air revived her greatly. She
lifted her hot temples to it, welcoming the waves of wet mist that swept
along the road, feeling her youth come back to her.

Suddenly as she was nearing the end of a narrow bit of lane between
high hedges, and the first houses of the village were in sight, she was
stopped by a noise behind her--a strange unaccountable noise as of
women's voices, calling and wailing. It startled and frightened her, and
she stood in the middle of the road waiting.

Then she saw coming towards her two women running at full speed, crying
and shouting, their aprons up to their faces.

"What is it? What is the matter?" she asked, going to meet them, and
recognising two labourers' wives she knew.

"Oh! miss--oh! miss!" said the foremost, too wrapt up in her news to be
surprised at the sight of her. "They've just found him--they're bringin'
ov 'im home; they've got a shutter from Muster Wellin! 'im at Disley
Farm. It wor close by Disley wood they found 'em. And there's one ov 'is
men they've sent off ridin' for the inspector--here he come, miss! Come
out o' th' way!"

They dragged her back, and a young labourer galloped past them on a farm
colt, urging it on to its full pace, his face red and set.

"Who is found?" cried Marcella--"What is it?"

"Westall, miss--Lor' bless you--Shot him