whence proceeded the low roar that was at this hour the only evidence of the stream’s existence.  He speedily stood on the verge of the waterfall which caused the noise, and stepping into the water at the top of the fall, waded through with the sure tread of one who knew every inch of his footing, even though the canopy of trees rendered the darkness almost absolute, and a false step would have precipitated him into the pool beneath.  Soon reaching the boundary of the grounds, he continued in the same direct line to traverse the alluvial valley, full of brooks and tributaries to the main stream—­in former times quite impassable, and impassable in winter now.  Sometimes he would cross a deep gully on a plank not wider than the hand; at another time he ploughed his way through beds of spear-grass, where at a few feet to the right or left he might have been sucked down into a morass.  At last he reached firm land on the other side of this watery tract, and came to his house on the rise behind—­Elsenford—­an ordinary farmstead, from the back of which rose indistinct breathings, belchings, and snortings, the rattle of halters, and other familiar features of an agriculturist’s home.

While Nicholas Long was packing his bag in an upper room of this dwelling, Miss Christine Everard sat at a desk in her own chamber at Froom-Everard manor-house, looking with pale fixed countenance at the candles.

‘I ought—­I must now!’ she whispered to herself.  ’I should not have begun it if I had not meant to carry it through!  It runs in the blood of us, I suppose.’  She alluded to a fact unknown to her lover, the clandestine marriage of an aunt under circumstances somewhat similar to the present.  In a few minutes she had penned the following note:-

   October 13, 183-.

Dear Mr. Bealand—­Can you make it convenient to yourself to meet me at the Church to-morrow morning at eight?  I name the early hour because it would suit me better than later on in the day.  You will find me in the chancel, if you can come.  An answer yes or no by the bearer of this will be sufficient.

   Christine Everard.

She sent the note to the rector immediately, waiting at a small side-door of the house till she heard the servant’s footsteps returning along the lane, when she went round and met him in the passage.  The rector had taken the trouble to write a line, and answered that he would meet her with pleasure.

A dripping fog which ushered in the next morning was highly favourable to the scheme of the pair.  At that time of the century Froom-Everard House had not been altered and enlarged; the public lane passed close under its walls; and there was a door opening directly from one of the old parlours—­the south parlour, as it was called—­into the lane which led to the village.  Christine came out this way, and after following the lane for a short distance entered upon a path within a belt of plantation,