When he got out-of-doors, and had time to collect his thoughts, he remembered that Gabriel Hirst was to be married that morning. He had been anxious to put in an appearance and give his friend a good handshake at the chapel door, but Kate's illness had driven the matter clean out of his mind. He set off now by the short cut to Ling Crag, past Smithbank and the foot of Hazel Dene. The village was all astir, and he found the little chapel full to the doors when he reached it. They made way for him instinctively, partly from sympathy with his recent trouble, partly through a feeling that the preacher's best friend ought not to have to stand outside the door while his marriage-service was being read. The ceremony was half through when Griff finally squeezed himself into a corner at the back of the chapel. A flood of confused thoughts came to him, dizzying his brain--remembrance of the time when he had stood at the altar with Kate--his mother's death--the ever-present anxiety about his wife. It was over at last. Griff hurried forward, and took a hand of each as they came out on to the prim little pavement of the chapel graveyard. "Good luck to you both," he murmured. "We owe it to you a good deal, I fancy," said Greta, with pretty friendliness. "That we do!" cried the preacher. "If it hadn't been for the quarrel, Griff, I should never have found heart to ask Greta to marry me. And if it hadn't been for the fight round the peat-stack, I should never have known what it was to feel the use of my arms. Man, it was worth living for, that fight!" "That is not nice of you, Gabriel," laughed the girl, softly; "you have something more important to live for now." But it was clear that she was far from disapproving of this new phase in her husband's character. "We shall make a Pagan of you yet, old fellow. Good-bye, good-bye." And Griff, with many final handshakes, was off across the moor to Gorsthwaite, running hard in his anxiety to hear the latest news of Kate. The doctor was coming down the stairs as Griff opened the front door. "Well?" he cried, forgetting altogether, in his eagerness, to regulate his voice properly. The old doctor had been present at such scenes often enough, but he had never felt an equal desire to turn tail and give necessity the slip. He took out his handkerchief and blew his nose; then he fidgeted with the buttons of his rough tweed coat--thinking all the while that it would have been a trifle easier in the telling if he had had the pluck to give Griff a plainer hint months ago. Finally, he looked up with a kind of desperation in his eyes. "Your wife is dead," he answered, in a harsh, grating voice. Griff put his hand to his forehead and stood there for a moment; the blood rushed to his face, and ebbed away again, as quickly as if some one had struck him. "Wait a moment, doctor," he said, after a while; "do you know just what that means? You ought to be very sure----"