right in love with the print.  ‘I’ll have a gownd of that,’ says she, ‘and I’ll take it now.’  In course, sir, I was only too glad to sell it to her, for, like Rachel, she’s good pay; but when I come to measure it, there was barely nine yards left, which is what Susan Peckaby takes for a gownd, being as tall as a maypole.  So I was in a mess; for I couldn’t take and sell it all, over Rachel’s head, having offered it to her.  ’Perhaps she wouldn’t mind having her aprons off the dark,’ says Susan Peckaby; ’it don’t matter what colour aprons is of—­they’re not like gownds.’  And then we agreed that I should send Dan up here at once to ask her, and Susan Peckaby—­who seemed mighty eager to have the print—­said she’d wait till he come back.  And I cut off the white Irish, and wrapped it up with the tape and things, and sent him.”

“Rachel Frost had left your shop, then?”

“She left it, sir, when she told me she’d have some of the lavender print.  She didn’t stay another minute.”

Robin Frost lifted his head again.  “She said she was going to stop at your place for a bit of a gossip, Mother Duff.”

“Then she didn’t stop,” responded that lady.  “She never spoke a single word o’ gossip, or looked inclined to speak it.  She just spoke out short, as if she was in a hurry, and she turned clean out o’ the shop afore the words about the lavender print had well left her.  Ask Sally Green, if you don’t believe me.”

“You did not see which way she took?” observed Mr. Verner.

“No, sir, I didn’t; I was behind my counter.  But, for the matter o’ that, there was two or three as saw her go out of my shop and take the turning by the pound—­which is a good proof she meant to come home here by the field way, for that turning, as you know, sir, leads to nowhere else.”

Mr. Verner did know it.  He also knew—­for witnesses had been speaking of it outside—­that Rachel had been seen to take that turning after she left Mrs. Duff’s shop, and that she was walking with a quick step.

The next person called in was Master Dan Duff—­in a state of extreme consternation at being called in at all.  He was planted down in front of Mr. Verner, his legs restless.  An idea crossed his brain that they might be going to accuse him of putting Rachel into the pond, and he began to cry.  With a good deal of trouble on Mr. Verner’s part, owing to the young gentleman’s timidity, and some circumlocution on his own, the facts, so far as Dan was cognisant of them, were drawn forth.  It appeared that after he had emerged from the field when he made that slight diversion in pursuit of the running animal, he continued his road, and had gained the lonely part near where the pond was situated, when young Broom, the son of Mr. Verner’s gamekeeper, ran up and asked him what was the matter, and whether anybody was in the pond.  Broom did not wait for an answer, but went on to the pond, and Dan Duff followed him.  Sure enough, Rachel Frost was in it.  They knew her by her clothes, as she rose to the surface.  Dan Duff, in his terror, went back shrieking to Verner’s Pride, and young Broom, more sensibly, ran for help to get her out.