The wretched father and mother read that farewell letter till every word it contained seemed written on their hearts, but it helped them in no manner towards the knowledge of their daughter’s fate. They went over the names in their own little circle; the half-dozen or so of young men—more or less unattractive—who were on visiting terms at the Rectory; but there was no member of Wykhamston society they could for a moment consider guilty: and indeed, the answer to every suspicion was obvious in the fact that every member of that small community was in his place: the curate going his quiet rounds on a hog-maned pony; the unmarried doctor scouring the neighbourhood from breakfast to tea-time in his travel-worn dog-cart; the lawyer’s son true to the articles that bound him to his father’s service; the small landowners and gentlemanly tenant-farmers of the immediate vicinity to be seen as of old at church and market-place. No, there was no one the Rector could suspect of act or part in his darling’s flight. A little later, and with extreme caution, he ventured to inquire among certain of his parishioners if any stranger had been seen about Wykhamston within the last month or so. He contrived to put this question to a well-to-do corn-chandler, the chief gossip of the little town, in a purely conversational manner. ‘Yes,’ said Mr. Huskings the corn-chandler, assenting to a general remark upon the dulness that had prevailed of late in Wykhamston, ‘the place has been quiet enough. It ain’t much of a place for strangers at the best of times, unless it’s one of them measuring chaps that come spying about, with a yard measure, after a new railway, that’s to take everybody away from the town and never bring nobody to it, and raise the price of meat and vegibles. There was that horgan-playin’ chap at the George the other day; what _he_ come for nobody could find out, for he didn’t measure nothing; only poked about the old church on workadays, and played the horgan. But of course you’d know all about him from Miss Davoren, as must have seen him sometimes when she went to practise with the coheer.’ The Rector’s sad face blanched a little. This was the man! ‘No,’ he said, somewhat falteringly, ‘my daughter never spoke of him; or if she did I didn’t take any notice. She’s away now for a little time, staying with friends in London. She may have told us about him; I don’t remember.’ ‘Strange old gentleman, the Rector!’ Mr. Huskings remarked to his wife afterwards; ‘such a nervous way with him lately; breaking fast, I’m afeard.’ ‘Miss Davoren could hardly have missed seein’ of him,’ he answered. ‘He were always about the church, when he warn’t fishin’, but he were a great hand at fishin’. Rather a well-looking chap, with dark eyes and long dark hair; looked summat like a furriner, but spoke English plain enough in spite of his furrin looks.’ ‘Young?’ asked the Rector. ‘Might be anything betwixt twenty-five and thirty-five.’ ‘And a gentleman, I suppose?’