So at break of day a wandering peasant found the lovers sleeping, and he stood awhile and marvelled at the beauty of the holy upturned faces, ere he passed along the river-bank towards the hamlet to tell what he had seen. And ere the sun was high came Master Jeremy Taylor, wandering with slow and reverent step along the riverside, conning the manuscript pages of his _Holy Living and Dying_ as he walked, and ever and anon lifting his eyes to gaze upon the devastation wrought upon the fair river's banks by the wild storm, now succeeded by a still, sad morning. Scarcely had he closed his eyes throughout that fearful night for thinking of his bosom-friend, whom he had perforce left to pursue alone his homeward battle with the storm, and to find on his arrival his beloved church a heap of blackened ruins; and very early he had left his uneasy couch and taken the road to Cwmfelin, that he might be the first, after the Lady Shanno, to offer consolation to his friend. But finding it yet very early, on his arrival at the vicarage, and unwilling to disturb Percival at his morning meal, he had strolled on to the riverside, to note what havoc might have been wrought during the night; and so, after some half-hour's ramble and mingled study of his manuscript and of nature, he too came to the silent pool under the willow-tree, and gazed, awe-struck and dumb with horrified amazement, upon the sleeping pair. Around their motionless forms the waters rippled gently in mournful whisper, and the early morning breezes sobbed through the willow-boughs, which bent, weeping, over them; and through the bare branches a few pale sunbeams, struggling from out the watery sky, glinted down upon the pale, upturned faces, bathing them in an ethereal glow. And in the silence of that early winter morning a bitter cry burst forth from Master Taylor's loving heart, as he knelt upon the cold ground, and, stooping over the river brink, passionately kissed the pale icy forehead of his friend. And still kneeling over those sleeping figures, his whole frame shaken with sobs, he was found some while later by the eager crowd who at the peasant's tidings came hastening to the riverside, and forgetting the strife and bitterness of the night past, stepped forward one by one, with hushed and reverent tread, to gaze with weeping eyes upon the faces of those whom they had so dearly loved; and on the still air there rose a wail of bitter weeping and lamentation for Master Vere and his fair dead love--a wail so heart-rending that certain ones among his enemies who had mingled with the crowd, unseen, were fain to slink away like evil things of darkness from the scene of woe.