It was said that all the clergy had been collected for miles round to endeavour to lay the devil, and prevent him seizing on his victim—the only clergyman present being poor, dear Thomas Clavering, who was too much overwhelmed with grief to be able to articulate more than a few words of affection, and of confidence in the love and merits of the Saviour. It was said that Mrs. Heritage had been sent for when all the efforts of the clergy failed, and that in the midst of her prayers the turret fell, the observatory windows flew shivered to atoms, and then all was still. The devil had thus gone off in a fury of disappointment. All remembered the calm, clear weather that attended this good woman back, and which lasted till the funeral, when it broke out again, and raged on for days and weeks. Not all the reasonings of a Bacon, or the eloquence of a Chatham, could have driven from the minds of the rural population the fixed idea that Sir Emanuel had been accustomed to practices of an awful character, or that the pre-eminent piety of Mrs. Heritage had most signally triumphed over the Prince of Darkness. For twenty years after, the grand epoch of all relative dates was the hard winter when Sir Emanuel Clavering died. In the little circle of Woodburn his departure left another gap. Of late years Sir Emanuel had lived more and come out more amongst his neighbours; and, where he had been known intimately, he was greatly beloved. In the families of Woodburn, Heritage, and Degge, he left a deep and lasting regret. During the winter Henry Clavering, now Sir Henry, was for the most part in London, attending to family affairs. He had not ventured to call at Woodburn Grange before leaving, being much affected by the death of his father, the Claverings having strong family attachments; but he wrote a very kind farewell through a letter to Ann, and to her expressed a hope of a more cheerful prospect as regarded their relationship to each other. Ann herself could not help cherishing an idea that the change of sentiment in his father at last would operate a change in his own mind. Several times in the course of the winter he wrote more and more happily, and promised himself much of her society in spring.