The thought that he might be mad was succeeded as she looked in his face by the thought that he must be ill. The healthy colour natural to them had left his large cheeks, their fatness was only flabbiness, the small eyes were filled with a strange, pleading, protesting misery as of a man in terrible bodily discomfort. "Mr Jones, I am afraid you are not well?" He stopped her with an impatiently thrown-up hand. "It's not that--I'm all right. It's worse--it's my son----" "The sailor?" "News has come that the _Doughty_ has gone down. All lost." "Your son was in that ship?" He did not answer, but pressed his lips, which were piteously quivering, together, and looked at her in staring misery. "I am going into the village to wire for--confirmation. Till I return you must keep with my wife." "But, Mr Jones! I am deeply, deeply sorry; but you must let me telegraph, and you, yourself, stay with Mrs Jones." "No. She would know as soon as she saw my face. I stole away--I dare not see her." He stayed a minute, biting at lips drawn inward over his teeth. "Our only one!" he said. "No other! When I know--when there is no hope--no hope--I must tell her. I could wish that she might die before--that we might both die." Tears had gushed upon the flabby cheeks; he mumbled his lips for a minute, unable to speak. "If there was anything else I could do--anything!" Mrs Macmichel said. "But this----!" "You will watch over her till I come back," he said, not even noticing her remonstrance. "It is a service I ask of you by right of our common humanity. Go in to her at once, please." With his hand on her arm he turned her to the gate, and opened it for her. "Let no one else come near her," he said. "The butcher delivering our meat gave me the news. He saw it on the newspaper board at the village shop. Everyone in the village who reads it will come up at once to tell my wife. Keep them away. She has a weak heart; told suddenly, she might--Don't let her stir out. Don't let her hold communication with anyone till I return." He put up a trembling hand in the direction of his clerical hat, but lacked the spirit to lift it, and turned hurriedly away. "But, Mr Jones!" she called. She made a step or two after him. "It will be so awkward--for her, I mean. She won't understand. You see, I hardly know your wife." He raised his strengthless hand for a few inches, and let it fall with a gesture of hopeless wretchedness. "Oh, what do such things matter?" he groaned. She was ashamed to persist. "I thought perhaps someone in the village--someone she knew----" "They could do nothing with her," he explained. "If she wanted them to go, she would tell them to go; she can't tell you. If she wanted to go into the village, she would go----" "How soon will you be back?"