I conquered myself at last. I had been in a hard school during the last ten years, living almost without hope in life, and so I felt it less than if I buoyed myself up with joyful hopes. Still, it was terrible, terrible. If I had come home a month before it might have been different, but I was too late. Ah, I was cursed, cursed with the Trewinion's curse! "Bill," I said, after many wild questions on my part, and excited exclamations on his, for he could not realise that I was alive, "tell me all about it, all about her death, and everything." "Well, Maaster Roger," said Bill, "what I knaw is through Jane Treloar, who was Miss Ruth's maid, and she came back yesterday by the coach. She do live here, you do knaw, sur. Well, she tould me and the cook that she only made one request when she got very ill, and that was that Maaster Wilfred shouldn't see her. She got weaker, sur, very fast, and never spoke to anybody, and died without a murmur." "When was she buried?" "Two days agone, sur." "Where?" "In the church, sur, near her house, in the vault under the Communion, so Jane Treloar said." For a long time Bill and I remained together, until I saw the evening shadows fall, then I made up my mind I would go to the Hall. "Bill," I said, "did you know me at all while we were talking?" "Not until you got wild, sur, then it struck me who you was. Nobody would recognise you at once, sur, you've so altered." "I don't want you to tell anyone you've seen me until you hear from me again, Bill." "All right, sur, I won't do nothin' you do'ant want me to do; you be'ant goin' away, be 'ee, sur, y'll stay and be squire!" "I don't know what I shall do yet," I said, "I'm almost mad; but you'll know by and by." Then I went away towards the house. I knew Wilfred was home, and I determined that we should meet, and that he should give an account of his dealings with the woman for whom I had left my home.