“Lloyd’s,” he said. “The _Peshawar_ arrived at Tilbury yesterday afternoon. The burial must have taken place somewhere in the English Channel.” * * * * * On the afternoon of Easter Sunday Madge and I motored out to the golf links three miles away. She proposed to walk along the beach just outside the dunes while I had my round, and return to the club-house for tea in two hours’ time. The day was one of most lucid spring: a warm south-west wind bowled white clouds along the sky, and their shadows jovially scudded over the sandhills. We had told her of Mrs. Acres’s death, and from that moment something dark and vague which had been lying over her mind since the autumn seemed to join this fleet of the shadows of clouds and leave her in sunlight. We parted at the door of the club-house, and she set out on her walk. Half an hour later, as my opponent and I were waiting on the fifth tee, where the road crosses the links, for the couple in front of us to move on, a servant from the club-house, scudding along the road, caught sight of us, and, jumping from his bicycle, came to where we stood. “You’re wanted at the club-house, sir,” he said to me. “Mrs. Carford was walking along the shore, and she found something left by the tide. A body, sir. ’Twas in a sack, but the sack was torn, and she saw---- It’s upset her very much, sir. We thought it best to come for you.” I took the boy’s bicycle and went back to the club-house as fast as I could turn the wheel. I felt sure I knew what Madge had found, and, knowing that, realised the shock.... Five minutes later she was telling me her story in gasps and whispers. “The tide was going down,” she said, “and I walked along the high-water mark.... There were pretty shells; I was picking them up.... And then I saw it in front of me--just shapeless, just a sack ... and then, as I came nearer, it took shape; there were knees and elbows. It moved, it rolled over, and where the head was the sack was torn, and I saw her face. Her eyes were open, Tony, and I fled.... All the time I felt it was rolling along after me. Oh, Tony! she’s dead, isn’t she? She won’t come back to the Gate-house? Do you promise me?... There’s something awful! I wonder if I guess. The sea gives her up. The sea won’t suffer her to rest in it.”... The news of the finding had already been telephoned to Tarleton, and soon a party of four men with a stretcher arrived. There was no doubt as to the identity of the body, for though it had been in the water for three days no corruption had come to it. The weights with which at burial it had been laden must by some strange chance have been detached from it, and by a chance stranger yet it had drifted to the shore closest to her home. That night it lay in the mortuary, and the inquest was held on it next day, though that was a bank-holiday. From there it was taken to the Gate-house and coffined, and it lay in the panelled parlour for the funeral on the morrow.