stress, and he remembered, with a
thrill, that Friend Barton used the stream for that peaceful purpose.
He shut down the gate and tore along through the ferns and tangled
grass till he came to the sheep-pen, where the bank was muddy and
trampled. The prisoners were bleating drearily and looking with longing
eyes across to the other side, where those who had suffered were now
straying and cropping the short turf, through the lights and shadows of
the orchard.

There was no other sign of life, except a broad hat with a brown
ribbon, buffeted about in an eddy, among the stones. The stream dipped
now below the hill, and the current, still racing fast with the impetus
he had given it, shot away among the hazel thickets which crowded close
to the brink. He was obliged to make a detour by the orchard, and come
out at the "mill-head" below;--a black, deep pool, with an ugly ripple
setting across it to the "head-gate." He saw something white clinging
there and ran round the brink. It was the sodden fleece of the old ewe
which had been drifted against the "head-gate," and held there to her
death. Evesham, with a sickening contraction of the heart, threw off
his jacket for a plunge, when Dorothy's voice called rather faintly
from the willows on the opposite bank.

"Don't jump! I'm here," she said. Evesham searched the willows, and
found her seated in the sun just beyond, half buried in a bed of ferns.

"I wouldn't have called thee," she said shyly, as he sank, pale and
panting, beside her, "but thee looked--I thought thee was going to jump
into the mill-head!"

"I thought _you_ were there, Dorothy!"

"I was there quite long enough. Shep pulled me out; I was too tired to
help myself much." Dorothy held her palm pressed against her temple,
and the blood trickled from beneath, streaking her pale, wet cheek.

"He's gone to the house to get me a cloak. I don't want mother to see
me--not yet," she said.

"I'm afraid you ought not to wait, Dorothy. Let me take you to the
house, won't you? I'm afraid you'll get a deadly chill."

Dorothy did not look in the least like death. She was blushing now,
because Evesham would think it so strange of her to stay, and yet she
could not rise in her wet clothes, which clung to her like the calyx to
a bud.

"Let me see that cut, Dorothy, _please_!"

"Oh, it's nothing. I don't _wish_ thee to look at it!"

"But I will! Do you want to make me your murderer--sitting there in
your wet clothes,