He felt like a child again, so free from care, so happy, except that his heart swelled with a love beyond the knowledge of children.  His quick temperament had rebounded from the depths of unequal depression, into which it so often fell, to the heights of a happy assurance.  The Tantalus cup was at his lips at last, and he would drink his full, be sure!  His eyes flashed and sparkled, his foot fell light and quick as an antelope’s, his brown cheek glowed—­never had he looked so handsome.  Angela would not forget her promise; she would be waiting for him by the lake, he was sure of that, and thither he made his way through the morning sunshine.  They were happy moments.

Presently he passed into the parish of Bratham, and his eye fell upon a neat red brick cottage, a garden planted with sunflowers, and a bright gravel path running to the rustic gate.  He thought the garden charmingly old-fashioned, and had just entered a mental note to ask Angela who lived there, when the door opened, and figure he knew emerged, bearing a mat in one hand and a mopstick in the other.  He was some way off, and at first could not quite distinguish who it was; but before she had come to the gate he recognized Pigott.  By this time she had stepped into the road, and was making elaborate preparations to dust her mat so that she did not see him, till he spoke to her.

“How are you, Pigott?  What may you be doing down here?  Why are you not up at the Abbey?”

She gave a cry, and the mat and mopstick fell from her hands.

“Mr. Heigham!” she said, in an awed voice that chilled his blood, “what has brought you back, and why do you come to me?  I never wronged you.”

“What are you talking about?  I have come to marry Angela, of course.  We are going to be married to-morrow.”

“Oh, then it’s really you, sir! And she married yesterday—­oh, good God!”

“Don’t laugh at me, nurse—­please don’t laugh.  It—­it upsets me.  Why do you shake so?  What do you mean?”

“Mean!—­I mean that my Angela married her cousin, George Caresfoot, at Roxham, yesterday. Heaven forgive me for having to tell it you!”

Reader, have you ever mortally wounded a head of large game?  You hear your bullet thud upon the living flesh, and see the creature throw up its head and stagger for a moment, and then plunge forward with desperate speed, crashing through bush and reeds as though they were meadow-grass.  Follow him awhile, and you will find him standing quite still, breathing in great sighs, his back humped and his eye dim, the gore trickling from his nostrils.  He is dying—­but be careful, he means mischief before he dies.

Any great shock, mental or physical, is apt to reduce man to the level of his brother beasts.  Arthur, for instance, behaved very much like a wounded buffalo as soon as the stun of the blow passed away, and the rending pain began to make itself felt.  For a few seconds he gazed before him stupid and helpless, then his face turned quite grey, the eyes and nostrils gaped wide, and a curious rigidity took possession of his muscles.