in my arms, and went upstairs with her to her own chamber and
laid her on her bed; and it was a great while before I would let the
women come at her to wash her and make all sweet and clean again. I lay
all that night in the outer parlour that had been my own so long ago,
or, rather, I went up and down it till daybreak; and no one dared to
speak to me or to move away the supper-things from the table where she
and I had supped the night before.

The inquest was held that day, but nothing came of it. I related my
story in the barest words, saying that I knew nothing of the three men,
and leaving it to Mr. Chiffinch to whisper in the officer's ear to
prevent him asking what he should not. Of the man I had killed nothing
was ever made public, except that he was a tanner's man and lived in
Wapping, and that his name was Belton.

On the Saturday we went down to Hare Street, all together, with the body
of the little maid in a coach by itself. I rode my horse behind, but
would speak never a word to my Cousin Tom who went in a coach, neither
then nor at any other time; neither would I lie in Hare Street House,
nor even enter it; but I lay in the house of a farmer at Hormead; and
waited outside the house for the funeral to come out next day, after the
Morning Prayer had been said in the church. She lies now in the
churchyard of Hormead Parva, where we laid her on that windy Sunday, in
the shadow of the little Saxon church. I rode straight away again with
my men from the churchyard gate, and came to London very late that
night. I went straight to my lodgings, and refused myself to everyone
for three days, writing letters here and there, and giving orders as to
the packing of all my effects. On the Thursday, a week after my Cousin
Dolly had come to town, I went to Mr. Chiffinch to take my leave.

Now of those days I dare say no more than that; and even if I would I
could add very little. My mind throughout was in a kind of dark tumult,
until, after my three days of solitude, I had determined what to do.
There were hours, I will not deny, in which my very faith in God Himself
seemed wholly gone; in which it was merely incredible to me that if He
were in Heaven such things could happen on earth. But sorrow of such a
dreadful kind as this is, in truth, if we will but yield to it, a sort
of initiation or revelation, rather than an obscurer of truth; and, by
the time that my three days were over I thought I saw where my duty lay,
and