All interested in Clement Hicks attended the funeral, including his mother and Chris. The last had yielded to Mrs. Blanchard’s desire and promised to stop at home; but she changed her mind and conducted herself at the ceremony with a stoic fortitude.  This she achieved only by an effort of will which separated her consciousness entirely from her environment and alike blinded her eyes and deafened her ears to the mournful sights and sounds around her.  With her own future every fibre of her mind was occupied; and as they lowered her lover’s coffin into the earth a line of action leapt into her brain.

Less than four-and-twenty hours later it seemed that the last act of the tragedy had begun.  Then, hoarse as the raven that croaked Duncan’s coming, Mr. Blee returned to Monks Barton from an early visit to the village.  Phoebe was staying with her father for a fortnight, and it was she who met the old man as he paddled breathlessly home.

“More gert news!” he gasped; “if it ban’t too much for wan in your way o’ health.”

“Nothing wrong at Newtake?” cried Phoebe, turning pale.

“No, no; but family news for all that.”

The girl raised her hand to her heart, and Miller Lyddon, attracted by Billy’s excited voice, hastened to his daughter and put his arm round her.

“Out with it,” he said.  “I see news in ’e.  What’s the worst or best?”

“Bad, bad as heart can wish.  A peck o’ trouble, by the looks of it.  Chris Blanchard be gone—­vanished like a dream!  Mother Blanchard called her this marnin’, an’ found her bed not so much as creased.  She’ve flown, an’ there’s a braave upstore ’bout it, for every Blanchard’s wrong in the head more or less, beggin’ your pardon, missis, as be awnly wan by marriage.”

“But no sign?  No word or anything left?”

“Nothing; an’ theer’s a purty strong faith she’m in the river, poor lamb.  Theer’s draggin’ gwaine to be done in the ugly bits.  I heard tell of it to the village, wheer I’d just stepped up to see auld Lezzard moved to the work’ouse.  A wonnerful coorious, rackety world, sure ’nough!  Do make me giddy.”

“Does Will know?” asked Mr. Lyddon.

“His mother’s sent post-haste for un.  I doubt he ’m to the cottage by now.  Such a gude, purty gal as she was, tu!  An’ so mute as a twoad at the buryin’, wi’ never a tear to soften the graave dust.  For why?  She knawed she’d be alongside her man again ‘fore the moon waned.  An’ I hope she may be.  But ‘t was cross-roads an’ a hawthorn stake in my young days.  Them barbarous ancient fashions be awver, thank God, though whether us lives in more religious times is a question, when you see the things what happens every hour on the twenty-four.”

“I must go to them,” cried Phoebe.

“I’ll go; you stop at home quietly, and don’t fret your mind,” answered her father.

“Us must all do what us can—­every manjack.  I be gwaine corpse-searchin’ down valley wi’ Chapple, an’ that ‘mazin’ water-dog of hisn; an’ if ’t is my hand brings her out the Teign, ’t will be done in a kind, Christian manner, for she’s in God’s image yet, same as us; an’ ugly though a drownin’ be, it won’t turn me from my duty.”