“Well, Sam, do you remember me?”

“Well, no, sir, I can’t rightly say how I do:  wait a bit; bean’t you the gemman as travels in the dry line, and as I seed a-kissing the chambermaid?”

“No, I don’t travel at present, and I have not kissed a chambermaid for some time.  Do you remember driving a gentleman over to the Abbey House a year or so ago?”

“Why, yes, in course I does.  Lord, now, and be you he? and we seed old Devil’s Caresfoot’s granddaughter.  Ah! many’s the time that he has damned me, and all so soft and pleasant like; but it was his eyes that did the trick.  They was awful, just awful; and you gave me half-a-crown, you did.  But somehow I thought I heard summat about you, sir, but I can’t rightly remember what it be, my head not being so good as it used to.”

“Perhaps you heard what I was going to be married?”

“No.  I don’t think how as it was that neither.”

“Well, never mind me; have you seen Miss Caresfoot—­the young lady you saw the day you drove me to the Abbey House—­anywhere about lately?”

Arthur waited for the old man’s lingering answer with all his heart upon his lips.

“Lor’, yes, sir, that I have; I saw her this morning driving through the Roxham market-place.”

“And how did she look?”

“A bit pale, I thought, sir; but well enough, and wonnerful handsome.”

Arthur gave a sigh of relief.  He felt like a man who has just come scatheless through some horrible crisis, and once more knows the sweet sensation of safety.  What a load the old man’s words had lifted from his mind?  In his active imagination he had pictured all sorts of evils which might have happened to Angela during his year of absence.  Lovers are always prone to such imaginings, and not altogether without reason, for there would seem to be a special power of evil that devotes itself to the derangement of their affairs, and the ingenious disappointment of their hopes.  But now the vague dread was gone, Angela was not spirited away or dead, and to know her alive was to know her faithful.

As they drove along, the old ostler continued to volunteer various scraps of information which fell upon his ears unheeded, till presently his attention was caught by the name Caresfoot.

“What about him?” he asked, quickly.

“He be a-dying, they do say.”

“Which of them?”

“Why, the red-haired one, him as lives up at the Hall yonder.”

“Poor fellow,” said Arthur, feeling quite fond of George in his happiness.

They had by this time reached the inn, where he had some supper, for old Sam’s good news had brought back his appetite, which of late had not been quite up to par, and then went straight to his room that faced towards the Abbey House.  It was, he noticed, the same in which he had slept the year before, and looking at the bed he remembered his dream, and smiled as he thought that the wood was passed, and before him lay nothing but the flowery meadows.  Mildred Carr, too, crossed his mind, but of her he did not think much, not that he was by any means heartless—­indeed, what had happened had pained him acutely, the more so because his own conscience told him he had been a fool.  He was very sorry, but, love being here below one of the most selfish of the passions, he had not time to be sorry just then.