“Pray, sir, did a medical man named Briggs ever live here?”

“What do you want to know for?”

“Why”—­Tom thought matters were too serious for delicacy—­“I am looking for a gentleman, and thought he might have come here.”

“And so he did, if you mean one in a queer hat and a cloak.”

“How long since?”

“Why, he came up our garden an hour or more ago; walked right into the parlour without with your leave, or by your leave, and stared at us all round like one out of his mind; and so away, as soon as ever I asked him what he was at—­”

“Which way?”

“To the river, I expect:  I ran out, and saw him go down the lane, but I was not going far by night alone with any such strange customers.”

“Lend me a lanthorn then, for Heaven’s sake!”

The lanthorn is lent, and Tom starts again down the lane.

Now to search.  At the end of the lane is a cross road parallel to the river.  A broad still ditch lies beyond it, with a little bridge across, where one gets minnows for bait:  then a broad water-meadow; then silver Whit.

The bridge-gate is open.  Tom hurries across the road to it.  The lanthorn shows him fresh footmarks going into the meadow.  Forward!

Up and down in that meadow for an hour or more did Tom and the trembling youth beat like a brace of pointer dogs, stumbling into gripes, and over sleeping cows; and more than once stopping short just in time, as they were walking into some broad and deep feeder.

Almost in despair, and after having searched down the river bank for full two hundred yards, Tom was on the point of returning, when his eye rested on a part of the stream where the mist lay higher than usual, and let the reflection of the moonlight off the water reach his eye; and in the moonlight ripples, close to the farther bank of the river—­what was that black lump?

Tom knew the spot well; the river there is very broad, and very shallow, flowing round low islands of gravel and turf.  It was very low just now too, as it generally is in October:  there could not be four inches of water where the black lump lay, but on the side nearest him the water was full knee deep.

The thing, whatever it was, was forty yards from him; and it was a cold night for wading.  It might be a hassock of rushes; a tuft of the great water-dock; a dead dog; one of the “hangs” with which the club-water was studded, torn up and stranded:  but yet, to Tom, it had not a canny look.

“As usual!  Here am I getting wet, dirty, and miserable, about matters which are not the slightest concern of mine!  I believe I shall end by getting hanged or shot in somebody else’s place, with this confounded spirit of meddling.  Yah! how cold the water is!”

For in he went, the grumbling honest dog; stepped across to the black lump; and lifted it up hastily enough,—­for it was Elsley Vavasour.

Drowned?