Ashley Road and joined her, looking over her shoulder at the bill.

"I heard about it this morning," said one. "I thought he couldn't last
long at that rate. It was always spending and making a show."

"There was someone else in it," said the other. "They say Burton's done
a moonlight flitting and gone to America."

Anne, whose thoughts had been engrossed by a new opportunity for Mary,
became aware of calamity of a new sort. She turned to the men.

"What has happened?" she asked, though even as she spoke she had grasped
it all. The man, a young, fair-haired man of twenty-six, with great
breadth of chest and long straight legs, answered with the willingness
of a countryman to spread news.

"Why, that Richard Burton's gone bankrupt and made a bolt. They say
it'll take the house as well as the horses to pay it all up. The
bailiffs was in to-day as I passed taking it all down. It's a bad job
for _somebody_, I heard," he said winking at the other man. He, glancing
at Anne, looked embarrassed and pretended not to see.

"Can either of you tell me where the girl who was living there has gone?
Is she still there?" she asked the latter man.

"Not she!" answered the former.

"They say she walked in the night to Ashley Union," said the elder man.
"She's there now and nobody saw her go, so I suppose she must have done.
It's a good eight miles of a walk."