When he reached home the young keeper found his parents already out-of-doors, with the whole household assembled about them. Mary Daccombe praised God at sight of her son uninjured. “’Tis the end of the world, by the sound of it,” she said. “Where be Davey to?” His father questioned Richard, and the man declared his ignorance of all particulars. “An explosion at the old powder-mills, or else a bolt from heaven,” he answered. “I must have passed by the very place, I reckon, not five minutes before the upstore.” “A thunder-planet, for sartain,” declared an ancient soul, whose few teeth chattered between his words. “I can call home when a com-com-comet was reigning fifty years an’ more agone, an’ ’twas just such open weather as us have had o’ late.” Mr. Daccombe felt anxious for his stock in certain byres and cow-houses that lay to the west of the powder-mills. But first he held up a lantern and counted the company. “Be us all here?” he asked. “Davey’s out somewheers,” answered his wife; “ess, an’ Jane Stanberry be—” She broke off, and looked at the farmer. “Down-long, I s’pose,” he said carelessly; then he turned to Richard. “Us can’t blink these meetings between ’em, Dick. Best man wins where a maid’s the prize; or which she thinks be the best. Awnly God send her ban’t in the powder-mills to-night.” “’Tis most certain she be,” answered Mary Daccombe. “Her didn’t know as the young man—Mr. Maybridge—was called off sudden to Moreton to serve ’pon a committee for the Hunt Dinner next month. A chap rode out, and he saddled his mare hisself and galloped off we him directly after he’d ate his meat.” “Jane didn’t know?” asked Richard. “No, she went out counting to find him, I’m afraid.” “An’ he’m at Moreton?” The man asked in a voice so strange that none failed to note it, even in this dark moment of fear and turmoil. “Her went to wait for him usual place, no doubt,” said Jonathan Daccombe. “Us had better come an’ look around for her, an’ Davey too—not to name the things in the long byre by the wood.” A hideous cry suddenly cut Jonathan short, for a storm had swept the sinner’s brain upon these words. He saw what he had done, and the shock overset the balance of his mind. “Come!” he cried; “I’ve killed her, I’ve ended her days in a scatter of blood and flesh! Nought to show for the butivul round body of her now. But her shall have Christian burial, if ’tis awnly a hair of her head left to put in the churchyard; an’ I’ll mourn for her on my knees, afore they string me up!” “God’s goodness! what gabble be this?” asked his father. “And Maybridge still alive, wi’ no smell of fire about him. I’ll—I’ll—” He broke off and gazed round him wildly.