l's Caresfoot's granddaughter. Ah! many's the time that he has
damned me, and all so soft and pleasant like; but it was his eyes that
did the trick. They was awful, just awful; and you gave me half-a-
crown, you did. But somehow I thought I heard summat about you, sir,
but I can't rightly remember what it be, my head not being so good as
it used to."

"Perhaps you heard what I was going to be married?"

"No. I don't think how as it was that neither."

"Well, never mind me; have you seen Miss Caresfoot--the young lady you
saw the day you drove me to the Abbey House--anywhere about lately?"

Arthur waited for the old man's lingering answer with all his heart
upon his lips.

"Lor', yes, sir, that I have; I saw her this morning driving through
the Roxham market-place."

"And how did she look?"

"A bit pale, I thought, sir; but well enough, and wonnerful handsome."

Arthur gave a sigh of relief. He felt like a man who has just come
scatheless through some horrible crisis, and once more knows the sweet
sensation of safety. What a load the old man's words had lifted from
his mind? In his active imagination he had pictured all sorts of evils
which might have happened to Angela during his year of absence. Lovers
are always prone to such imaginings, and not altogether without
reason, for there would seem to be a special power of evil that
devotes itself to the derangement of their affairs, and the ingenious
disappointment of their hopes. But now the vague dread was gone,
Angela was not spirited away or dead, and to know her alive was to
know her faithful.

As they drove along, the old ostler continued to volunteer various
scraps of information which fell upon his ears unheeded, till
presently his attention was caught by the name Caresfoot.

"What about him?" he asked, quickly.

"He be a-dying, they do say."

"Which of them?"

"Why, the red-haired one, him as lives up at the Hall yonder."

"Poor fellow," said Arthur, feeling quite fond of George in his
happiness.

They had by this time reached the inn, where he had some supper, for
old Sam's good news had brought back his appetite, which of late had
not been quite up to par, and then went straight to his room that
faced towards the Abbey House. It was, he noticed, the same in which
he had slept the year before, and looking at the bed he remembered his
dream, and smiled as he thought that the wood was passed, and before
him lay nothing but the flowery meadows. M