How Katrine Barbary passed that night you have seen: for, like many another story-teller, I have had to carry you back a few hours. Shivering and shaking, now hot, now cold, she lay, striving to reason with herself that _it could not be_; that so dreadful a thing was not possible; that she was the most wicked girl on earth for imagining it: and she strove in vain. All the events of the past day or two kept crowding into her mind one upon another in flaring colours, like the figures in some hideous phantasmagoria. The unexpected arrival of the bank-notes for Mr. Reste; her father's covetous look at them and his dreadful joke; their going out together that night poaching; their quarrelling together the next morning; their worse quarrelling at night, and their dashing out to the yard (as if in passion) one after the other. And, so far as Katrine could trace it, that was the very last seen or heard of Edgar Reste. The next morning he was gone; gone in a mysterious manner, leaving all his possessions behind him. Her father was reticent over it; would not explain. Then came the little episode of the locked-up brewhouse, which had never been locked before in Joan's memory. Mr. Barbary refused to unlock it, said he had put some wine there; told Joan she must do without the jack. What had really been hidden in that brewhouse? Katrine felt faint at the thought. _Not wine._ And the terrible farce of packing Mr. Reste's effects and addressing them to Euston Square Station, London! Would they lie there for ever--unclaimed? Alas, alas! The proofs were only too palpable. Edgar Reste had been put out of the world for ever. She had been the shivering witness to his secret burial. * * * * * "What's the matter, Katrine? Are you ill?" The inquiry was made by Mr. Barbary next day at breakfast. Sick unto death she looked. The very bright night had given place to a showery morning, and the rain pattered against the window-panes. "I have a headache," answered Katrine, faintly. "Better send Joan to the Manor to say you cannot attend to-day." "Oh, I would rather go; I must go," she said hastily. For this good girl had been schooling herself as well as she knew how; making up her mind to persevere in fulfilling the daily duties of her life in the best way she should be able; lest, if she fell short abruptly, suspicion might turn towards her father. She had wildly prayed Heaven to grant her strength and help to bear up on her course. Not from her must come the pointing finger of discovery. It is true that he--Edgar--was her first and dearest love; she should never love another as she had loved him; but she was her father's child, and held him sacred. "Why must you go?" demanded Mr. Barbary, as, having finished a plate of broiled mushrooms, he began upon a couple of eggs with an appetite that the night's work did not seem to have spoiled. "The air--the walk--may do me good."