Whilst he was still speaking, the house had filled with an ever-gathering crowd. People stood in the passage, peeping over each other's shoulders, and pushing to get a glimpse of Algernon. There were even faces pressed to the windows outside, and the garden was blocked up. Polly had come hurrying back from the town, and now elbowed her way through the crowd to her master. She soon cleared the passage of the throng of idlers who blocked it up, and shut them outside the door by main force. They still swarmed about the house and garden, both on the side of the road and that of Whit Meadow. And their numbers increased every minute. Polly pulled the man who had been spokesman into the dining-room, and bade him say what he had to say without further preamble. "It's no use 'preparing' him," she said, pointing to Algernon, who had sunk into a chair, and was holding his forehead with his hands; "you'll only make it worse. I'm afraid you can't tell him anything dreadfuller than he's got into his head already. Speak out!" Thus requested, the man, a carpenter of Pudcombe village, told his tale. Some men, working in the fields about a mile above Whitford--half a mile, perhaps, from Ivy Lodge, had heard cries for help from the meadows near the river. He, the carpenter, happened to be passing along a field path from a farmhouse where he had been at work, and ran with the labourers down to the water's edge. There they saw David Powell, the Methodist preacher, wildly shouting for help, and with clothes dripping wet. He had waded waist-deep into the Whit to try to save some one who was drowning there, but in vain. He could not swim, and the current had carried the drowning person out of his reach. "You know," said the carpenter, "there are some ugly swirls and currents in the Whit, for all it looks so sluggish." A boat had been got out and manned, and had made all speed in the direction Powell pointed out. He insisted on accompanying them in his wet clothes. They searched the river for some time in vain. They had got as far as Duckwell Reach when they caught sight of a dark object close in shore. It was the form of a woman. Her clothes had caught in the broken stump of an old willow that grew half in the water; and she was thus held there, swinging to and fro with the current. She was taken out and carried to Duckwell Farm, where every effort had been made to restore her to consciousness. Powell understood the best methods to employ. The Seth Maxfields had done everything in their power, but it was no use. She had never moved, nor breathed, nor quivered an eyelash. That was the substance of the carpenter's story. "Is she dead?" asked Algernon with his face hidden. They were the first words he had spoken. And when the man answered with a mournful but positive "Yes; quite, quite dead," he said not a syllable further, but turned away from them, and buried his head in the cushions of the chair.