. I knew what they were
looking for, but, scared and drenched and shivering as I was, no more
would I go near them. My duty was rather to go in and comfort dear Aunt
Mary and myself. In that melancholy quest I could do no good, but a
great deal of harm, perhaps, if any thing was found, by breaking forth
about it.

Mrs. Hockin had not the least idea of the danger we had encountered.
Bailiff Hopkins had sent her home in Rasper's fly by an inland road, and
she kept a good scolding quite ready for her husband, to distract his
mind from disaster. That trouble had happened she could not look out
of her window without knowing; but could it be right, at their time of
life, to stand in the wet so, and challenge Providence, and spoil the
first turkey-poult of the season?

But when she heard of her husband's peril, in the midst of all his
losses, his self-command, and noble impulse first of all to rescue life,
she burst into tears, and hugged and kissed me, and said the same thing
nearly fifty times.

"Just like him. Just like my Nicholas. You thought him a speculative,
selfish man. Now you see your mistake, Erema."

When her veteran husband came home at last (thoroughly jaded, and
bringing his fishermen to gulp the pea soup and to gollop the turkey),
a small share of mind, but a large one of heart, is required to imagine
her doings. Enough that the Major kept saying, "Pooh-pooh!" and the more
he said, the less he got of it.

When feelings calmed down, and we returned to facts, our host and hero
(who, in plain truth, had not so wholly eclipsed me in courage, though
of course I expected no praise, and got none, for people hate courage in
a lady), to put it more simply, the Major himself, making a considerable
fuss, as usual--for to my mind he never could be Uncle Sam--produced
from the case of his little "Church Service," to which he had stuck like
a Briton, a sealed and stamped letter, addressed to me at Castlewood, in
Berkshire--"stamped," not with any post-office tool, but merely with the
red thing which pays the English post.

Sodden and blurred as the writing was, I knew the clear, firm hand, the
same which on the envelope at Shoxford had tempted me to meanness. This
letter was from Thomas Hoyle; the Major had taken it from the pocket of
his corpse; all doubt about his death was gone. When he felt his feet on
the very shore, and turned to support his mother, a violent wave struck
the back of his head upon Major Hockin's