who had long been
dead--to turn him out directly.

But though Mr. Berners sat by her and succeeded in soothing her, he
gained no information from her. She babbled of everything under the sun
but the one subject to which he wished to lead her thoughts.

At length, in despair, Mr. Berners arose to depart.

"Where does that quarryman live who picked her up and brought her home?"

"Up at the quarries, sir, to be sure."

"But there are fifty cottages up there, scattered over the space of
miles."

"Well, sir, it is in the whitish stone one, the nighest but three to the
big oak, you know; which his name it is Norriss, as you can find him by
that. But, law, sir! he can't tell you no more nor I have," said Mrs.
Winterose.

Before she quite finished her speech Mr. Berners ran down stairs and out
of the cottage, and bent his steps to the quarryman's hut.

It happened just as the old nurse had foretold.

The man could tell Mr. Berners nothing but this: that Miss Tabby had
come to his house just about daylight, having her clothing wet and
draggled nearly up to her waist with mud and water, and shaking as with
an ague, and sinking with fatigue.

He having neither wife nor daughter, nor any other woman about the
house, had no proper dry clothes to offer her; but he made her sit by
the fire, while he questioned her as to the manner in which she came to
be so much exposed.

She answered him only by senseless lamentations and floods of tears.

When her chill had gone off a high fever came on, and, the quarryman
explained, he knew that she was going to be ill, so he offered to take
her home; and, partly by leading, and partly by lugging, he had
contrived to carry her safe to her father's cottage, which she reached
in a state of fever and delirium.

This was all the information that Mr. Berners could get from the honest
quarryman, who would willingly have given him more had he possessed it.

Lyon Berners went back to Black Hall, where he found Clement and Beatrix
Pendleton waiting for him in the parlor, and wondering at his prolonged
absence.

He apologized for having left them for so many hours, and explained the
business that had called him so suddenly away, giving them the startling
intelligence of Miss Tabby's unaccountable safety; which, he added,
left the fate of his beloved wife in greater uncertainty than they had
supposed it to be. She was _probably_ drowned, but _possibly_ rescued.
He could not tell. He and the