When Hyde departed to keep his marriage engagement, Ketira the gipsy had again disappeared from Church Dykely. In less than a month afterwards, Abel Carew received a letter from her. She had found Kettie: and she had found that her own instincts against Hyde Stockhausen were not mistaken ones. For all his seeming fair face and his indignant denials, it was he who had been the thief. "Of all brazen-faced knaves, that Stockhausen must be the worst!--an adept in cunning, a lying hypocrite!" exploded the Squire. "I suspected him at the time," said Duffham. "You did! What were your grounds for it?" "I had no particular grounds. His manner did not appear to me to be satisfactory; that was all. Of course I was not sure." "He is a base man," concluded the Squire. And from that time he turned the cold shoulder on Hyde. But time is a sure healer of wounds; a softener of resentment. As it passed on, we began to forget Hyde's dark points, and to remember his good qualities. Any way, Ketira the gipsy and Ketira's daughter passed out of memory, just as they had passed out of sight. Suddenly we heard that Abel Carew was preparing to go on a journey. I went off to ask him where he was bound for. "I am going to see _them_, Master Johnny," he replied. "I don't know how they are off, sir, and it is my duty to see. The child is ill: and I fear they may be wanting assistance, which Ketira is too proud to write and ask for." "Kettie ill! What is the matter with her?" Abel shook his head. "I shall know more when I get there, sir." Abel Carew locked up his cottage and began his pilgrimage into Hertfordshire with a staff and a wallet, intending to walk all the way. In a fortnight he was back again, bringing with him a long face. "It is sad to see the child," he said to me, as I sat in his room listening to the news. "She is no more like the bonnie Kettie that we knew here, than a dead girl's like a living one. Worn out, bent and silent, she sits, day after day and week after week, and her mother cannot rouse her. She has sat so all along." "But what is the matter with her?" "She is slowly dying, sir." "What of?" "A broken heart." "Oh dear!" said I; believing I knew who had broken it. "Yes," said Abel, "_he_. He won her heart's best love, Master Johnny, and she pines for him yet. Ketira says it was his marriage that struck her the death-blow. A few weeks she may still linger, but they won't be many." Very sorry did I feel to hear it: for Ketira's sake as well as Kettie's. The remembrance of the day I had gilded the oak-ball, and her wonderful gratitude for it, came flashing back to me. And there's nothing more to add to this digression. Except that Kettie died. The tidings did not appear to affect Hyde Stockhausen. All his thoughts were given to his wife and child. Old Abel had never reproached him by as much as a word: if by chance they met, Abel avoided looking at him, or turned off another way.