This is no time to tell of weeping.  The dry chronicle is fittest.  Hard on nine o’clock in the December darkness, the night being still and clear, Jenny’s babe was at her breast, and her ears were awake for the return of her husband.  A man rang at the door of the house, and asked to see Dr. Shrapnel.  This man was Killick, the Radical Sam of politics.  He said to the doctor:  ’I ’m going to hit you sharp, sir; I’ve had it myself:  please put on your hat and come out with me; and close the door.  They mustn’t hear inside.  And here’s a fly.  I knew you’d be off for the finding of the body.  Commander Beauchamp’s drowned.’

Dr. Shrapnel drove round by the shore of the broad water past a great hospital and ruined abbey to Otley village.  Killick had lifted him into the conveyance, and he lifted him out.  Dr. Shrapnel had not spoken a word.  Lights were flaring on the river, illuminating the small craft sombrely.  Men, women, and children crowded the hard and landing-places, the marshy banks and the decks of colliers and trawlers.  Neither Killick nor Dr. Shrapnel questioned them.  The lights were torches and lanterns; the occupation of the boats moving in couples was the dragging for the dead.

‘O God, let’s find his body,’ a woman called out.

‘Just a word; is it Commander Beauchamp?’ Killick said to her.

She was scarcely aware of a question.  ‘Here, this one,’ she said, and plucked a little boy of eight by the hand close against her side, and shook him roughly and kissed him.

An old man volunteered information.  ’That’s the boy.  That boy was in his father’s boat out there, with two of his brothers, larking; and he and another older than him fell overboard; and just then Commander Beauchamp was rowing by, and I saw him from off here, where I stood, jump up and dive, and he swam to his boat with one of them, and got him in safe:  that boy:  and he dived again after the other, and was down a long time.  Either he burst a vessel or he got cramp, for he’d been rowing himself from the schooner grounded down at the river-mouth, and must have been hot when he jumped in:  either way, he fetched the second up, and sank with him.  Down he went.’

A fisherman said to Killick:  ’Do you hear that voice thundering?  That’s the great Lord Romfrey.  He’s been directing the dragging since five o’ the evening, and will till he drops or drowns, or up comes the body.’

‘O God, let’s find the body!’ the woman with the little boy called out.

A torch lit up Lord Romfrey’s face as he stepped ashore.  ’The flood has played us a trick,’ he said.  ’We want more drags, or with the next ebb the body may be lost for days in this infernal water.’

The mother of the rescued boy sobbed, ‘Oh, my lord, my lord!’

The earl caught sight of Dr. Shrapnel, and went to him.

‘My wife has gone down to Mrs. Beauchamp,’ he said.  ’She will bring her and the baby to Mount Laurels.  The child will have to be hand-fed.  I take you with me.  You must not be alone.’