There came a relief to their fears. Dr. Jago, hearing that the old people were becoming seriously alarmed, avowed that Hubert Stone had got safely to land that night, after his swimming-feat, and had made his way at once to his house. Here he had put on dry clothes, some things of the young man's happening to be at the Doctor's, had borrowed a little money of him, and had gone away again, saying he had business at a distance. "And why couldn't you have told this afore, sir?" grumbled Aaron, when he had heard Dr. Jago's narrative. "Because Hubert asked me not to mention it until he was back again," replied the little Doctor. "But I thought it might be better to do so now, as he stays away so long and you seem to be getting into a fever over it." "Do you know where he went to, sir?" "No; I do not. He is all right, depend upon it, Aaron; he'll be turning up one of these fine days." "All the same, he might have writ to me just a line," contended the old man. Miss Winter was nearly as anxious as Aaron for the return of Hubert. She had determined to question him further upon that strange assertion he had made--that she had no right to Heron Dyke--and to insist upon a full and explicit answer. A thought crossed her mind sometimes that possibly Hubert might be fearing this very questioning, and was staying away in consequence. And the time again rolled on. Three weeks came and went, and Hubert Stone remained to them all as one dead. "He does not return, Miss Ella," cried Aaron to his mistress one morning; and there was a worn, pitiful look on his face that she had never seen before. "Dorothy's fretting frightfully: she will have it, something dreadful has happened to him, and that we shall never set eyes on him again." Involuntarily there came into Ella's memory what Dorothy had told her about the dread apparition seen by her that midnight in the shrubbery. She herself had no faith in such superstitious fancies, but she could quite understand the hold they would have over the mind of a woman like Dorothy Stone. "It is strange," she replied, "I grant that; and, as you say, he might have written. Still, had any harm befallen him you would surely have heard of it from one source or another. I have felt no fear since I heard the report of Dr. Jago." "But he stays so long, ma'am." "We can only go on hoping for the best. Young men have sometimes strange fancies for roving, and they do not always think of those to whom their absence or silence may cause grief." "He's gone to London, mayhap, that wild place, and won't come back till he's parted with his last shilling," suggested Aaron, anxious to snatch a morsel of comfort anyhow. "I'd once a fling of that sort myself, ma'am, when I was a young fellow, only I got no further than Norwich. They thought I had drowned myself; and father, he had Wippenham Pond dragged for me."