across some fields and by the river-bank.  His wife used always to go part of the way to meet him when she knew he was coming.  I know she meant to go and meet him this time.  The way is very lonely, and I have often felt fidgety about her going alone, but she hadn’t a bit of fear; and I didn’t like to offer to go with her, feeling sure that Mr. Holbrook would be vexed by seeing me at such a time.  Well, sir, I had arranged everything comfortably, so that she should miss nothing by my being away, and I bade her good-bye, and started off to walk to Malsham.  I can’t tell you how hard it seemed to me to leave her, for it was the first time we had been parted for so much as a day since she came to the Grange.  I thought of her all the while I was at my aunt’s; who has very fidgety ways, poor old lady, and isn’t a pleasant person to be with.  I felt quite in a fever of impatience to get home again; and was very glad when a neighbour’s spring-cart dropped me at the end of the lane, and I saw the gray old chimneys above the tops of the trees.  It was four o’clock in the afternoon when I got home; father was at tea in the oak-parlour where we take our meals, and the house was as quiet as a grave.  I came straight to this room, but it was empty; and when I called Martha, she told me Mrs. Holbrook had gone out at one o’clock in the day, and had not been home since, though she was expected back to dinner at three.  She had been away three hours then, and at a time when I knew she could not expect Mr. Holbrook, unless she had received a fresh letter from him to say that he was coming by an earlier train than usual.  I asked Martha if there had been any letters for Mrs. Holbrook that day; and she told me yes, there had been one by the morning post.  It was no use asking Martha what kind of letter it looked, and whether it was from Mr. Holbrook, for the poor ignorant creature can neither read nor write, and one handwriting is the same as another to her.  Mrs. Holbrook had told her nothing as to where she was going, only saying that she would be back in an hour or two.  Martha let her out at the gate, and watched her take the way towards the river-bank, and, seeing this, made sure she was going to meet her husband.  Well, sir, five o’clock struck, and Mrs. Holbrook had not come home.  I began to feel seriously uneasy about her.  I told my father so; but he took the matter lightly enough at first, saying it was no business of ours, and that Mrs. Holbrook was just as well able to take care of herself as any one else.  But after five o’clock I couldn’t rest a minute longer; so I put on my bonnet and shawl and went down by the river-bank, after sending one of the farm-labourers to look for my poor dear in the opposite direction.  It’s a very lonely walk at the best of times, though a few of the country folks do go that way between Malsham and Crosber on market-days.  There’s scarcely a house to be seen for miles, except Wyncomb Farmhouse, Stephen Whitelaw’s place, which lies a little