Poor Edgar! he could not answer for his thoughts, which were wild and incoherent, and rushed from one point to another with feverish speed and intensity; but his actions were not incoherent. He rode from the railway to the village very steadily and calmly, and stopped at Sally Timms’ cottage-door to ask for Jeanie, who was better and had regained consciousness. Then he went up the street, and dismounted at the Rectory gate. He had not intended to do it, or rather he had not known what he intended. The merest trifle, a nothing decided him. The door was open, and the Rector’s sturdy cob was standing before it waiting for his master. Edgar made a rapid reflection that he could now tell his story quickly, that there would be no time for much talk. He went in without knocking by the open door. Mr. Fielding was not in the library, nor in his drawing-room, nor in his garden. “I expect him in every moment, sir,” Mrs. Solmes said, with a curtsey. “He’s visiting the sick folks in the village. The horse is for young Mr. Denbigh, please, sir. Master has mostly given up riding now.” Edgar made a nod of assent. He was not capable of speech. If this had been his first attempt to communicate the news, it would have seemed providential to his excited fancy. But Lady Augusta had not been out, and he had been able to tell his tale very fully there. Now, however, there seemed a necessity laid upon him to tell it again. If not Mr. Fielding, some one at least must know. He went across to the Doctor’s, thinking that at least he would see Miss Somers, who would not understand nor believe him. He had sent his horse away, telling the groom he would walk home. He was weary, and half crazed with exhaustion, sleeplessness, and intense emotion. He could not keep it in any longer. It seemed to him that he would like to have the church bells rung, to collect all the people about, to get into--no, not the pulpit, but the Squire’s pew--the place that was like a stage-box, and tell everybody. That would be the right thing to do. “Simon!” he called out to the old clerk, who had been working somewhere about the churchyard, and who at the sound of the horse’s hoofs had come to see what was going on, and stood with his arms leaning on the wall looking over. “Is there aught ye want as I can do for ye, Squire?” said old Simon. “No; nothing, nothing,” said poor Edgar; and yet he would have been so glad had some one rung the church bells. He paused, and this gentle domestic landscape burned itself in upon his mind as he crossed to the Doctor’s door. The village street lay asleep in the sun. Old Simon, leaning on the churchyard wall, was watching in a lazy, rural way the cob at Mr. Fielding’s door waiting for the curate, Edgar’s groom going off with his master’s horse towards the big gates, and a waggon which was standing in front of the Arden Arms. The waggoner had a tankard of ale raised to his face, and was draining it, concealing himself behind its pewter disk.