MASTER CLEMENT, the papers in his hand, retraced his steps until he came to a bench set in the shadow of a yew that knotted the minister’s house and garden to the churchyard. He sat down and spread the three out upon the wood beside him. It was the last-found scrap upon which, naturally, he concentrated attention. ASK JOAN HERON WHO GAVE HER THE RUE THAT’S PLANTED IN HER GARDEN. He sat with knitted brow and pursed lips, searching for a meaning. One was not there at first sight. He weighed the words. JOAN HERON—The daughter of old Heron that had died of the plague. He brought her before his mind’s eye—a tall, grey-eyed girl sitting quietly in church. Save for that image she did not come into his mind with any force; he had, after all, no great knowledge of her. They were outlying people, the Herons, and then they had been away from Hawthorn. He was a man of the study and the pulpit and of crisises in the parish, rather than of any minute, loving, daily intercourse and knowledge; theologian rather than pastor. JOAN HERON. He would, however, presently think together any impressions or memories. Now little occurred further than that she had been away with her father for years, living under the walls of the castle that was prelatical. In addition, he remembered that neither old Roger Heron nor this girl had ever brought to him spiritual problems to be solved. Many did bring them—cold, creeping doubts as to whether God really meant to save them or not. But the Herons had never done so. The fact, called to mind, just faintly darkened for him the name beneath his hand. He would make enquiries.—WHO GAVE HER THE RUE THAT’S PLANTED IN HER GARDEN. Master Clement frowned. He had little taste for riddles and uncertainties and haunting suspensions of thought. Make a line distinct; colour matters plainly; if a thing were black, paint it in black! The words on the paper carried no meaning, or a foolish one. RUE.... Not long before he had been reading an account, set forth in a book, of a number of Satan’s machinations, and of the devices, likings, and small personal habits of his sworn servants. A bit of this text suddenly sprang out before him, sitting there beneath the yew tree. “_For plants—hemlock, poppy, and mandrake, and, especially, the witches love, handle, and give to such as show inclination to become of their company, rue_—” Master Clement slowly folded the three pieces of paper together, took out his pocketbook, and laid them in it. Grace Maybank was yet strongly in his mind, but now on the wall beside her name he put another name.