could not have saved her any more than I could. These unfortunate cases
happen now and then," sighed he, "showing us how powerless we really
are."

Well, it was grievous news wherewith to startle the parish. And Mrs.
Carradyne, a martyr to belief in ghosts and omens, grew to dread the
chimes with a nervous and nameless dread.


II.

It was but the first of February, yet the weather might have served for
May-day: one of those superb days that come once in a while out of their
season, serving to remind the world that the dark, depressing, dreary
winter will not last for ever; though we may have half feared it means
to, forgetting the reassuring promise of the Divine Ruler of all things,
given after the Flood:

"_While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat,
and summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease._"

The warm and glorious sunbeams lay on Church Leet, as if to woo the bare
hedges into verdant life, the cold fields to smiling plains. Even the
mounds of the graveyard, interspersed amidst the old tombstones, looked
green and cheerful to-day in the golden light.

Turning slowly out of the Vicarage gate came a good-looking clergyman of
seven-or-eight-and-twenty. A slender man of middle height, with a sweet
expression on his pale, thoughtful face, and dark earnest eyes. It was
the new Vicar of Church Leet, the Reverend Robert Grame.