The engine and trucks stopped, the men shouldered their tools and tumbled out, and we followed them. A few hundred paces in front of us was a railway bridge, over which a road passed, and under which the rail went at a sharp curve. The snow had drifted heavily against the bridge, with its high earth embankment, making manifest at a glance the cause of the disaster.

The bridge was crowded with human figures, and on the line below men were working in the drift, amid piles of dÉbris and splintered wood. The wrecked train had all been slightly draped in snow; the engine alone, barely cold, lying black and grim, like some mighty giant, formidable in death. A sheet of glass ice near it showed how the boiler had burst. Some of the hindermost carriages were still standing, or had fallen comparatively uninjured; but others seemed to have leaped upon their fellows, and ploughed right through them into the drift. It was well that it began to snow as we reached the spot. There were traces of dismal smears on the white ground which it would be seemly to hide.

Our friend in black went forward and asked a few questions of the man in charge, and presently returned.

"The remainder of the passengers are at the farm," he said, pointing to a house at a little distance; and without further delay we began to scramble up the steep embankment, and clamber over the stone-wall of the bridge into the road. My mind was full of other things, but I remember still the number of people assembled on the bridge, and how a man was standing up in his donkey-cart to view the scene. It was Saturday, and there were quantities of village school-boys sitting astride on the low wall, or perched on adjacent hurdles, evidently enjoying the spectacle, jostling, bawling, eating oranges, and throwing the peel at the engine. Some older people touched their hats sympathetically, and one went and opened a gate for us into a field, through which many feet seemed to have come and gone; but for the greater number the event was evidently regarded as an interesting variation in the dull routine of every-day life; and to the school-boys it was an undoubted treat.

Ralph and Charles walked on in front, following the track across the field. It was not particularly heavy walking after what we had had earlier in the day, but Ralph stumbled perpetually, and presently Charles drew his arm through his own, and the two went on together, the police-inspector following with me.

In a few minutes we reached the farm, and entered the farm-yard, which was the nearest way to the house. A little knot of calves, intrenched on a mound of straw in the centre of the yard, lowered their heads and looked askance at us as we came in, and a party of ducks retreated hastily from our path with a chorus of exclamations, while a thin collie dog burst out of a barrel at the back door, and made a series of gymnastics at the end of a chain, barking hoarsely, as if he had not spared himself of late.

An elderly woman with red arms met us at the door, and, on a whisper from the police-inspector, first shook her head, and then, in answer to a further whisper, nodded at another door, and, a voice calling her from within, hastily disappeared.

The inspector opened the door she had indicated and went in, I with him. Charles, who had grown very grave, hung back with Ralph, who seemed too much dazed to notice anything in heaven above or the earth beneath. The door opened into an out-house, roughly paved with round stones, where barrels, staves, and divers lumber had been put away. There was straw in the farther end of it, out of which a yellow cat raised two gleaming eyes, and then flew up a ladder against the wall, and disappeared among the rafters. In the middle of the floor, lying a little apart, were three figures with sheets over them. Instinctively we felt that we were in the presence of death. I looked back at Charles and Ralph, who were still standing outside in the falling snow. Charles was bareheaded, but Ralph was looking absently in front of him, seeming conscious of nothing. The inspector made me a sign. He had raised one of the sheets, and now withdrew it altogether. My heart seemed to stand still. It was Aurelia! Aurelia changed in the last great change of all, but still Aurelia. The fixed artificial color in the cheek consorted ill with the bloodless pallor of the rest of the face, which was set in a look of surprise and terror. She was altered beyond what should have been. She looked several years older. But it was still Aurelia. Those little gloved hands, tightly clinched, were the same which she had held to the library fire as we talked the day before; even the dress was the same. Alas! she had been in too great a hurry to change it before she left, or her thin shoes. Poor little Aurelia! And then—I don't know how it was, but in another moment Ralph was kneeling by her, bending over her, taking the stiffened hands in his trembling clasp, imploring the deaf ears to hear him, calling wildly to the pale lips to speak to him, which had done with human speech. I could not bear it, and I turned away and looked out through the open door at the snow falling. The inspector came and stood beside me. In the silence which followed we could hear Charles speaking gently from time to time; and when at last we both turned towards them again, Ralph had flung himself down on an old bench at the farther end of the out-house, with his back turned towards us, his arms resting on a barrel, and his head bowed down upon them. He neither spoke nor moved.

Charles left him, and came towards us, and he and the inspector spoke apart for a moment, and then the latter dropped on his knees beside the dead woman, and, after looking carefully at a dark stain on one of the wrists, turned back the sleeve. Crushed deep into the round white arm gleamed something bright. It was an emerald bracelet which we both knew. Charles cast a hasty glance at Ralph, but he had not moved, and he drew me beside him, so as to interpose our two figures between him and the inspector. The latter quietly turned down the sleeve and recomposed the arm.

"I knew she would have them on her, if she had them at all," he said, in a low voice. "We need look no farther at present. Not one will be missing. They are all there."

He gazed long and earnestly at the dead face, and then to my horror he suddenly unfastened the little hat. I made an involuntary movement as if to stop him, but Charles laid an iron grip upon me, and motioned to me to be still. The stealthy hand quietly pushed back the fair curls upon the forehead, and in another moment they fell still farther back, showing a few short locks of dark hair beneath them, which so completely altered the dead face that I could hardly recognize it as belonging to the same person. The inspector raised his head, and looked significantly at Charles. Then he quietly drew forward the yellow hair over the forehead again, replaced the hat, and rose to his feet. Charles and I glanced apprehensively at Ralph, but he had not stirred. As we looked, a hurried step came across the yard, a hand raised the latch of the door, and some one entered abruptly. It was Carr. For one moment he stood in the door-way, for one moment his eyes rested horror-struck on the dead woman, then darted at us, from us to the inspector, who was coolly watching him, and—he was gone! gone as suddenly as he had come; gone swiftly out again into the falling snow, followed by the wild barking of the dog.

Charles, who had had his back to the door, turned in time to see him, and he made a rush for the door, but the inspector flung himself in his way, and held him forcibly.

"Let me go! Let me get at him!" panted Charles, struggling furiously.

"I shall do no such thing, sir. It can do no good, and might do harm. He is armed, and you are not; and he would not be over-scrupulous if he were pushed. Besides, what can you accuse him of? Intent to rob? For he did not do it. If you have lost anything, remember, you have found it again. If you caught him a hundred times, you have no hold on him. I know him of old."

"You?"

"Yes; I have known him by sight long enough. He is not a new hand by any means—nor she either, as to that, poor thing."

"But what on earth brought him here?"

"He was waiting for news of her in London, most likely, and he knew she would have the jewels on her, and came down when he got wind of the accident."

"Knew she would have the jewels! Then do you mean to say there was collusion between the two?"

The inspector glanced furtively at Ralph, but he had never stirred, or raised his head since he had laid it down on his clinched hands.

"They are both well known to the police," he said at last, "and I think it probable there was collusion between them, considering they were man and wife."