he Abbey?"

She gave a cry, and the mat and mopstick fell from her hands.

"Mr. Heigham!" she said, in an awed voice that chilled his blood,
"what has brought you back, and why do you come to me? I never wronged
you."

"What are you talking about? I have come to marry Angela, of course.
We are going to be married to-morrow."

"Oh, then it's really _you_, sir! _And she married yesterday--oh, good
God!_"

"Don't laugh at me, nurse--please don't laugh. It--it upsets me. Why
do you shake so? What do you mean?"

"Mean!--I mean that my Angela _married her cousin, George Caresfoot,
at Roxham, yesterday._ Heaven forgive me for having to tell it you!"

Reader, have you ever mortally wounded a head of large game? You hear
your bullet thud upon the living flesh, and see the creature throw up
its head and stagger for a moment, and then plunge forward with
desperate speed, crashing through bush and reeds as though they were
meadow-grass. Follow him awhile, and you will find him standing quite
still, breathing in great sighs, his back humped and his eye dim, the
gore trickling from his nostrils. He is dying--but be careful, he
means mischief before he dies.

Any great shock, mental or physical, is apt to reduce man to the level
of his brother beasts. Arthur, for instance, behaved very much like a
wounded buffalo as soon as the stun of the blow passed away, and the
rending pain began to make itself felt. For a few seconds he gazed
before him stupid and helpless, then his face turned quite grey, the
eyes and nostrils gaped wide, and a curious rigidity took possession
of his muscles.

The road he was following led to a branching lane, the same that
Angela was turning up that misty Christmas Eve when she saw Lady
Bellamy glide past in her carriage. This lane had in former ages, no
doubt, to judge from its numerous curves, been an ancient forest-path,
and it ran to the little bridge over the stream that fed the lake--a
point that, by travelling as the crow flies from Pigott's cottage,
might be reached in half the time. This fact Arthur seemed at that
dreadful moment to suddenly realize, more probably from natural
instinct than from any particular knowledge of the lay of the land. He
did not speak again to Pigott, and she was too frightened at his face
to speak to him. He only looked at her, but she never forgot that look
so long as she lived. Then he turned like a mad thing, and went
_crash_ through the thick fence that hedged