‘Where he has gone, papa? Isn’t he at home?’ ‘No. I waited dinner for an hour and a half, and went in alone (learning that you were too ill to come down) and ate a cutlet. It was not very polite of him to walk off without leaving any information as to his intentions.’ ‘I can’t understand it, papa. He may have gone to town on business, perhaps. He went away suddenly just before—before my dearest was taken ill—went one day and came back the next.’ ‘Humph,’ muttered Sir Nugent. ‘Rather unmannerly.’ There was wonderment in the house that night, as the hours wore on, and the master was still absent, wonderment most of all in the stables where Tarpan’s various vices were commented upon. Scouts were sent across the moors—but the night was dark, the moors wide, and the scouts discovered no trace of horse or rider. Sir Nugent rose early next morning, and was not a little alarmed at hearing that his son-in-law had not returned, and had gone out the previous evening for a ride on the moor. It was just possible that he had changed his mind, ridden into Seacomb, and left Tarpan at one of the hotels while he went on by the train which left Seacomb for Exeter at seven o’clock in the evening. He might have taken it into his head to sleep at Exeter, and go on to London next morning. A man distraught with grief might be pardoned for eccentricity or restlessness. The day wore on, as the night had done, slowly. Viola roamed about the silent house, full of dreariest thoughts, going to the nursery about once every half-hour to smother her little nephew with tearful kisses. His black frock and his artless questions about ‘Mamma, who had gone to heaven,’ smote her to the heart every time she saw him. Sir Nugent telegraphed to his son-in-law at three clubs, thinking to catch him at one of the three if he were in London. The day wore on to dusk, and it was just about the time when Churchill had gone to the stables in quest of Tarpan yesterday afternoon. Viola was standing at one of the nursery windows looking idly down the drive, when she saw a group of men come round the curve of the road, carrying a burden. That one glance was enough. She had heard of the bringing home of such burdens from the hunting-field, or from some pleasure-jaunt on sea or river. There was no doubt in her mind, only a dreadful certainty. She rushed from the room without a word, and down to the hall, where her father appeared at the same moment, summoned by the loud peal of the bell. Some farm-labourers, collecting seaweed on the beach had found the Squire of Penwyn, crushed to death among the jagged rocks, rider and horse lying together in one mangled mass. The trampled and broken ground above showed the force of the shock when horse and rider went down over the sharp edge of the cliff.