He pushed on sturdily until he came to the high road, and the turn that led to Beamond's farm. There his heart began to misgive him. The impression which Sophia's manner had made on his mind was growing weak; the improbability of her story rose more clearly before him. That a woman tramping the roads in her petticoats could be Lady Coke, the young bride of the owner of all the country side, seemed, now that he weighed it in cold blood, impossible. And from misgiving he was not slow in passing to repentance. How much better it would have been, he thought, had he pursued his duty to the dead and the parish with a single eye, instead of starting on this wild-goose chase. How much better--and even now it was not too late. He paused; he as good as turned. But in the end he remembered that he had given the girl his word, and, turning his back on Beamond's farm, he walked in the opposite direction.

He had not gone far when he saw a young man of a strange raffish appearance coming along the road to meet him. The man swung a stick as he walked, and looked about him with a devil-may-care air which on the instant led the good parson to set him down for a strolling player. As such he was for passing him with a good day, and no more. But the other, who had also marked him from a distance, stopped when they came to close quarters.

"Well met, Master Parson!" he cried. "And how far may you have come?"

"A mile or a little less," the vicar answered mildly. And seeing, now that they were face to face, that the stranger was little more than a lad, he went on to ask him if he could be of service to him.

"Have you seen a lady on the road?"

The clergyman started. "Dear, dear!" he said. "'Tis well met, indeed, sir, and a mercy you stayed me. To be sure I have! She is no farther away than my house at this moment!"

"The devil she is!" the young man answered heartily. "That's to the purpose then. I was beginning to think--but never mind! Come on, and tell her woman where she is."

"Certainly I will. Is she here?"

"She's sitting in the hedge at the next corner. It's on your way. Lord!" with a sigh of relief, not unmixed with pride, "what a night I have had of it!"

"Indeed, sir," his reverence said with sympathy; and as they turned to proceed side by side, he eyed his neighbour curiously.

"Aye, indeed, and indeed!" Tom answered. "You'd say so if you'd been called out of bed the moment you were in it, and after a long day's tramp too! And been dragged up and down the country the whole live-long night, my friend."

"Dear me; is it so, sir? And you were in her ladyship's company when she was stopped, I suppose, sir?"

"I? Not at all, or it would not have happened. I've never set eyes on her."

"Her servants fetched you then?"

"Her woman did! I've seen no more of them."

The vicar pricked up his ears. "Nor the carriage?" he ventured.

"Not I. Hasn't she got the carriage with her?"

Mr. Michieson rubbed his head. "No," he said slowly; "no, she has not. Do I understand then, sir, that--that you are yourself a complete stranger to the parties?"

"I? Totally. But here's her woman. She can tell you about it. Oh, you need not look at me," Tom continued with a grin, as the vicar, startled by the sight of the handsome gipsy-like girl, looked at him dubiously. "She's a pretty piece, I know, to be straying the country, but I'm not in fault. I never set eyes on the little witch until last night." And then, "Here, child," he cried, waving his hat to her, "I've news! Your lady is at the parson's, and all's well! Now you can thank me that I did not let you go into the smallpox."

Lady Betty clasped her hands. Her face was radiant. "Are you sure? Are you quite sure?" she cried, her voice trembling. "Are you sure she is safe?"

"She is quite safe," Mr. Michieson answered slowly; and he looked in wonder from one to the other. There was something suspiciously alike in their tumbled finery, their dishevelled appearance. "I was even now on my way," he continued, "to Coke Hall to convey the news to Sir Hervey."

It was Tom's turn to utter a cry of astonishment. "To Sir Hervey?" he said. "To Sir Hervey Coke, do you mean?"

"To be sure, sir."

"But--why, to be sure, I might have known," Tom cried. "Was she going there?"

"She is his wife, sir."

Tom laughed with a knowing air. "Oh, but that's a flam at any rate!" he said. "Sir Hervey's not married. I saw him myself, ten days ago."

The girl stood up. "Where?" she said.

"Where?"

"Aye, where, sir, where, since you are so free with his name?"

"In Clarges Row, in London, if you must know," Tom answered, his face reddening at the reminiscence. "And if he'd been married, or had thoughts of being married then, he'd have told me."

Lady Betty stared at him, her breath coming quickly; something began to dawn in her eyes. "Told you, would he?" she said slowly. "He'd have told you? And who may you be, if you please?"

"Well," Tom answered a trifle sharply, "my name is Maitland, and for the matter of that, my girl, you need not judge me by my clothes. I know Sir Hervey, and----"

He did not finish. To his indignation, to the clergyman's astonishment, the girl went into a fit of laughter; laughing till she cried, and drying her eyes only that she might laugh again. Sir Tom stared and fumed and swore; while the vicar looked from one to the other, and asked himself--not for the first time--whether they were acting together, or the man was as innocent as he appeared to be.

One thing he could make clear, and he hastened to do it. "I don't know why you laugh, child," he said patiently. "At the same time, the gentleman is certainly wrong in the fact. Sir Hervey Coke is married, for I had it from the steward some days ago, and I am to go with the tenants to the Hall to see her ladyship."

Tom stared. "Sir Hervey Coke married!" he cried in amazement, and forgot the girl's rudeness. "Since I saw him? Married? Impossible! Whom do you say he has married?"

The vicar coughed. "Well, 'tis odd, sir, but it's a lady of the same name--as yourself."

"Maitland?"

"Yes, sir! A Miss Maitland, a sister of Sir Thomas Maitland, of Cuckfield."

Sir Tom's eyes grew wide. "Good Lord!" he cried; "Sophia!"

"A relation, sir? Do I understand you that she's of your family?"

"My sister, sir; my sister."

The clergyman stared a moment, and then without comment he walked aside and looked over the hedge. He smiled feebly at the well-known prospect. Was it possible, he asked himself, that they thought he could swallow this? That they deemed him so simple, so rustic, that such a piece of play-acting as this could impose upon him? Beyond a doubt they were in league together; with their fine story and their apt surprise, and "my lady" in his garden. The only point on which he felt doubt was the advantage they looked to draw from it, since the moment he reached the Hall the bubble must burst.

He turned by-and-by, thinking in his honest cunning to resolve that doubt. He found Tom in a sort of maze staring at the ground, and the girl watching him with a strange smile. For the first time the good vicar had recourse to the wisdom of the serpent. "Had I not better go to the Hall at once," he said blandly, "and send a carriage for my lady?"

"Go to the Hall without seeing her?" Tom cried, awakening from his reverie. "Not I! I go to her straight. Sophia? Sophia? Good Lord!"

"And so do I, sir, by your leave," the girl cried pertly. "And at once. I know my duty."

"And you're the man to show us the way," Tom continued heartily, slapping his reverence on the back. "No more going up and down at random for me! Let's to her at once! We can find a messenger to go to the Hall, when we have seen her. But Lord! I can't get over it! When was she married, my girl?"

"Well," Betty answered demurely, "'twas the same day, I believe, as your honour was to have been married."

Tom winced and looked at her askance. "You know that, you baggage, do you?" he cried.

"So it went in the steward's room, sir!"

But the vicar, his suspicions confirmed by their decision not to go to the Hall, hung back. "I think I had better go on," he said. "I think Sir Hervey should be warned."

"Oh, hang Sir Hervey!" Tom answered handsomely. "Why is he not looking after his wife? Lead on! Lead on, do you hear, man? How far is it?"

"About a mile," the vicar faltered; "I should say a--a long mile," he added, as he reluctantly obeyed the pressure of Tom's hand.

"Well, I am glad it's no further!" the young man answered. "For I'm so sharp set I could eat my sister. You've parson's fare, I suppose? Bacon and eggs and small beer?" he continued, clapping the unfortunate clergyman on the back with the utmost good humour. "Well, sir, you shall entertain us! And while we are dining, the messenger can be going to the Hall. Soap and a jack-towel will serve my turn, but the girl--what's your name, child?"

"Betty, sir."

"Will be the better for the loan of your wife's shoes and a cap! And Sophy is married? Where was it, my girl?"

"At Dr. Keith's, sir."

"The deuce it was!" Tom cried ruefully. "Then that's two hundred out of my pocket! Were you with her, child?"

"No, sir, her ladyship hired me after she was married."

Tom looked at her. "But--but I thought," he said, "that you told me last night that you had been brought up with your mistress?"

Betty bit her lip, unable to remember if she had told him so. "Oh, yes, sir," she said hastily, "but that was another mistress."

"Also of the name of Sophia?"

"Yes, sir."

"And for which Sophia--were you weeping last night?" Tom asked with irony.

Betty's face flamed; her fingers tingled also, though the slip was her own. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to throw off the mask, and tell the young man who she was. But for a reason, Betty did not choose to adopt this course. Instead, she stooped, pretending that her shoe-buckle was unfastened; when she rose there were tears in her eyes.

"You are very unkind, sir," she said in a low voice. "I took a--a liberty with my mistress in calling her by her name, and I--I had to account for it, and didn't tell quite the truth."

Tom was melted, yet his eye twinkled. "Last night or to-day?" he said.

"Both, sir," she whispered demurely. "And I'm afraid, sir, I took a liberty with you, too, talking nonsense and such like. But I'm sure, sir--I am very sorry, and I hope you won't tell my mistress."

The girl looked so pretty, so absurdly pretty in her penitence, and there was something so captivating in her manner, that Tom was seized with an inordinate desire to reassure her. "Tell, child? Not I!" he cried generously. "But I'll have a kiss for a forfeit. You owe me that," he continued, with one eye on the vicar, who had gone on while she tied her shoe. "Will you pay it now, my dear, or to-morrow with interest?"

"A kiss? Oh, fie, sir!"

"Why, what is the harm in a kiss?" Tom asked; and the rogue drew a little nearer.

"Oh, fie, sir!" Betty retorted, tossing her head, and moving farther from him. "What harm indeed? And you told me last night I should be as safe with you as my mistress need be!"

"Well?" Tom exclaimed triumphantly. "And shouldn't I kiss your mistress? Isn't she my sister? And--pooh, child, don't be silly. Was ever waiting-maid afraid of a kiss? And in daylight?"

But Betty continued to give him a wide berth. "No, sir, I'll not suffer it!" she cried tartly. "It's you who are taking the liberty now! And you told me last night you had seen enough of women to last you your life!"

"That was before I saw you, my dear!" Tom answered with impudence. But he desisted from the pursuit, and resuming a sober course along the middle of the road, became thoughtful almost to moodiness; as if he were not quite so sure of some things as he had been. At intervals he glanced at Betty; who walked by his side primly conscious of his regards, and now blushing a little, and now pouting, and now when he was not looking, with a laughing imp dancing in her eyes that must have effected his downfall in a moment, if he had met her gaze. As it was he lost himself in thinking how pretty she was, and how fresh; how sweet her voice, and how dainty her walk; how trim her figure, and----

And then he groaned; calling himself a fool, a double, treble, deepest-dyed fool! After the lesson he had learned, after the experience through which he had passed, was he really, really going to fall in love again? And with his sister's maid? With a girl picked up--his vows, his oaths, his resolutions notwithstanding--in the road! It was too much!

And Lady Betty walking beside him, knowing all and telling nothing, Betty the flirt? "He put his coat on me; I have worn his coat. He said he would tie me to the gate, and he would have tied me," with a furtive look at him out of the tail of her eye--that was the air that ran in her mind as she walked in the sunshine. A kiss? Well, perhaps; sometime. Who knew? And Lady Betty blushed at her thoughts. And they came to a corner where the garden house lay off the road. The vicarage was not yet in sight.

At the gate of the orchard the poor parson waited for them, smiling feebly, but not meeting their eyes. He was in a state of piteous embarrassment. Persuaded that they were cheats and adventurers, hedge-players, if nothing worse, he knew that another man in his place would have told them as much, and sent them about their business. But in the kindness of his heart he could no more do this than he could fly. On the other hand, his hair rose on end when he pictured his wife, and what she would say when he presented them to her. What she would do were he to demand the good fare they expected, he failed to conceive; but at the thought, the dense holly hedge that screened the house seemed all too thin. Alas, the thickest hedge is pervious to a woman's tongue!

In the others' ease and unconsciousness he found something pitiful; or he would have done so, if their doom had not involved his own punishment. "She is here, is she?" Tom said, his hand on the gate.

The vicar nodded, speechless; he pointed in the direction of the garden house.

Betty slipped through deftly. "Then, if you please, sir, I'll go first," she said. "Her ladyship may need something before she sees you--by your leave, sir?" And dropping a smiling curtsey, she coolly closed the gate on them, and flew down the path in the direction the vicar had indicated.

"Well, there's impudence!" Tom exclaimed. "Hang me if I know why she should go first!" And then, as a joyful cry rang through the trees, he looked at the vicar.

But Michieson looked elsewhere. He was listening, he was shivering with anticipation. If that cry reached her! Tom, however, failed to notice this; innocent and unconscious, he opened the gate and passed through; and, thinking of his sister and his last parting from her, went slowly across the sunlit grass until the low-hanging boughs of the apple-trees hid him.

The parson looked up and down the road with a hunted eye. The position was terrible. Should he go to his wife, confess and prepare her? Or should he wait until his unwelcome guests returned to share the brunt. Or--or should he go? Go about his business--was there not sad, pressing business at Beamond's farm?--until the storm was overpast.

He was a good man, but he was weak. A few seconds of hesitation, and he skulked down the road, his head bent, his eyes glancing backwards. He fancied that he heard his wife's voice, and hurried faster and faster from the dreaded sound. At length he reached the main road and stood, his face hot with shame. He considered what he should do.

Beamond's? Yes, he must go about that. He must, to save his self-respect, go about business of some kind. At a large farm two miles away his churchwarden lived; there he could get help. The farmer and his wife had had the disease, and were in less terror of it than some. At any rate he could consult them: in a Christian parish people could not lie unburied. In vital matters he was no coward, and he knew that if no one would help him--which was possible, so great was the panic--he would do all himself, if his strength held out.

In turning this over he tried to forget the foolish imbroglio of the morning; yet now and again he winced, pricked in his conscience and his manhood. After all, they had come to him for help, for food and shelter; and who so proper to afford these as God's minister in that place. At worst he should have sent them to one of the farms, and allowed it out of the tithe, and taken the chance when Easter came, and Peg discovered it. Passing the branch-road on his left, which Tom and Betty had taken in the night, he had a distant view of a horseman riding that way at speed: and he wondered a little, the sight being unusual. Three minutes later he came to the roadside ale-house which Betty had visited. The goodwife was at the door, and watched him come up. As he passed she cried out, to learn if his reverence had news.

"None that's good, Nanny," he answered; never doubting but she had the illness at Beamond's on her mind. And declining her offer of a mug of ale he went on, and half a mile farther turned off the road by a lane that led to the churchwarden's farm. He crossed the farmyard, and found Mrs. Benacre sitting within the kitchen door, picking over gooseberries. He begged her not to move, and asked if the goodman was at home.

"No, your reverence, he's at the Hall," she answered. "He was leaving hay in the Furlongs, and was fetched all in a minute this hour past, and took the team with him. The little lad came home and told me."

The vicar started, and looked a little odd. "I wanted to see him about poor Beamond," he said.

"'Tis true, then, your reverence?"

"Too true. There's nothing like it happened in the parish in my time."

"Dear, dear, it gives one the creeps! After all, when you've got a good husband, what's a little marking, and be safe? There should be something done, your reverence. 'Tis these gipsies bring it about."

The vicar set back the fine gooseberry he had selected. "What time did her ladyship arrive yesterday?" he asked.

Mrs. Benacre lifted up her hands in astonishment. "La, didn't you hear?" she cried. "But to be sure, you're off the road a good bit, and all your people so taken up with they poor Beamonds too? No time at all, your reverence! She didn't come. I take it, it's about that, Sir Hervey has sent for Benacre. He thinks a deal of him, as his father before him did of the old gaffer! I remember a cocking was at the Hall," Mrs. Benacre continued, "when I was a girl--'twas a match between the gentlemen of Sussex and the gentlemen of Essex--and the old squire would have Benacre's father to dine with them, and made so much of him as never was!"

The vicar had listened without hearing. "She stopped the night in Lewes, I suppose?" he said, his eyes on the gooseberries, his heart bumping.

"'Twasn't known, the squire being at Lewes to meet her. And to-day I've had more to do than to go fetching and carrying, and never a soul to speak to but they two hussies and the lad, since Benacre went on the land. There, your reverence, there's a berry should take a prize so far away as Croydon."

"Very fine," the parson muttered. "But I think I'll walk to the Hall and inquire."

"'Twould be very becoming," Mrs. Benacre allowed; and made him promise he would bring back the news.

As he went down the lane, he saw two horsemen pass the end of it at a quick trot. When he reached the road, the riders were out of sight; but his heart misgave him at this sign of unusual bustle. A quarter of an hour's walking along a hot road brought him to the park gate; it was open, and in the road was the lodge-keeper's wife, a child clinging to her skirts. Before he could speak, "Has your reverence any news?" she cried.

He shook his head.

"Well, was ever such a thing?" she exclaimed, lifting up her hands. "They're gone to be sure, as if the ground had swallowed them. It's that, or the rogues ha' drowned them in the Ouse!"

He felt himself shrinking in his clothes. "How--how did it happen?" he muttered faintly. What had he done? What had he done?

"The postboys left them in the carriage the other side of Beamond's," the woman answered, delighted to gain a listener. "And went back with fresh horses, I suppose it would be about seven this morning; they could not get them in the night. They found the carriage gone, and tracked it back so far almost as Chayley, and there found it, and the woman and the two grooms with it; but not one of them could give any account, except that their ladyships had been carried off by a gang of men, and they three had harnessed up and escaped. The postboys came back with the news, and about the same time Mr. Watkyns came by the main road through Lewes, and knew naught till he was here! He was fit to kill himself when he found her ladyship was gone," the woman continued with zest; "and Sir Hervey was lit to kill 'em all, and serve 'em right; and now they are searching the country, and a score with them; but it's tolerable sure the villains ha' got away with my lady, some think by Newhaven and foreign parts! What? Isn't your reverence going to the house?"

"No," his reverence muttered, with a sickly smile. "No." And he turned from the cool shadows of the chestnut avenue, that led to the Hall, and setting his face the way he had come, hastened through the heat. He might still prevent the worst! He might still--but he must get home. He must get home. He had walked three miles in forty minutes in old days; he must do it now. True, the sun was midsummer high, the time an hour after noon, the road straight and hot, and unshaded, his throat was parched, and he was fasting. But he must press on. He must press on, though his legs began to tremble under him--and he was not so young as he had been. There was the end of Benacre's Lane! He had done a mile; but his knees were shaky, he must sit a moment on the bank. He did so, and found the trees begin to dance before his eyes, his thoughts to grow confused; frightened he tried to rise, but instead he sank in a swoon, and lay inert at the foot of the bank.