The snow-fall began to slacken as I waited beside him, and when Jock returned from the stable with Tim and another man, the rising moon was struggling out from behind the clouds, and giving promise of a fair night after the bitter and stormy day. We laid my dead friend on a hurdle and carried him home to the Hall, while old Ta-ta, who had come with the men, sniffed curiously at our heels, and, divining something strange and woeful in our dark and silent burden, followed with her sleek head bent to the glistening snow, and only offered one wistful wag of her tail to assure me that if I were sad, well, I knew she was so too. I learnt from Jock that Mrs. Ellmer had met her husband, and that, after the manner of women, she had led him in and ministered to his bodily wants while taking advantage of his weak and abject state to inflict upon him such chastisement with her voluble tongue as might well reconcile him to another long absence from her. But Jock thought that the poor wretch's wanderings were nearly over. 'I doot if a's een will see the mornin' licht again,' said the gillie gravely. 'A' speaks i' whispers, an' shivers an' cries like a bairn. A' must be verra bad, for a' doesna' mind the lady's talk.' 'And Mrs. Scott, does she know?' Jock looked solemn and nodded. 'Meester Ferguson told her, and he says the poor leddy's crazed like, an' winna speak nor move.' I asked no more, and I remember no further detail of that ghastly procession. I saw nothing but Babiole's face, her eyes looking straight into mine full of involuntary reproach to me for having unwittingly brought yet another disaster upon her. Ferguson met us at the door of the Hall, and told me, in a voice which real distress made only more harsh and guttural, that Mrs. Ellmer had had the cottage unlocked, and had caused fires to be lighted there for the reception of her husband, the poor lady believing that he would give less trouble there. 'How is Mrs. Scott?' I asked anxiously. Ferguson answered in a grating broken whisper. 'She went away--by herself, sir--when I told her--let her guess like--the thing that had happened.'