ed to be
cognizant of the guiles of the world and competent to give advice on
such an occasion as this. 'If she was one of our people,' said Father
Barham, 'we should have her back quick enough.'

'Would ye now?' said Ruggles, wishing at the moment that he and all
his family had been brought up as Roman Catholics.

'I don't see how you would have more chance of catching her than we
have,' said Carbury.

'She'd catch herself. Wherever she might be she'd go to the priest,
and he wouldn't leave her till he'd seen her put on the way back to
her friends.'

'With a flea in her lug,' suggested the farmer.

'Your people never go to a clergyman in their distress. It's the last
thing they'd think of. Any one might more probably be regarded as a
friend than the parson. But with us the poor know where to look for
sympathy.'

'She ain't that poor, neither,' said the grandfather.

'She had money with her?'

'I don't know just what she had; but she ain't been brought up poor.
And I don't think as our Ruby'd go of herself to any clergyman. It
never was her way.'

'It never is the way with a Protestant,' said the priest.

'We'll say no more about that for the present,' said Roger, who was
waxing wroth with the priest. That a man should be fond of his own
religion is right; but Roger Carbury was beginning to think that
Father Barham was too fond of his religion. 'What had we better do? I
suppose we shall hear something of her at the railway. There are not
so many people leaving Beccles but that she may be remembered.' So the
waggonette was ordered, and they all prepared to go off to the station
together.

But before they started John Crumb rode up to the door. He had gone at
once to the farm on hearing of Ruby's departure, and had followed the
farmer from thence to Carbury. Now he found the squire and the priest
and the old man standing around as the horses were being put to the
carriage. 'Ye ain't a' found her, Mr Ruggles, ha' ye?' he asked as he
wiped the sweat from his brow.

'Noa;--we ain't a' found no one yet.'

'If it was as she was to come to harm, Mr Carbury, I'd never forgive
myself,--never,' said Crumb.

'As far as I can understand it is no doing of yours, my friend,' said
the squire.

'In one way, it ain't; and in one way it is. I was over there last
night a bothering of her. She'd a' come round may be, if she'd a' been
left alone. She wouldn't a' been off now, only for our going over to
Sheep's Acre. But