In the east the broken shoulders of the hills receded, winding with the dale like a coast line of gray cliffs above the mist that was their sea.  Tortured, mutilated by the jagged cloud that held her, the moon struggled and tore her way, she lifted and freed herself high and struck the marshes white.  Defaced and sinister, above her battlements, she looked at the house and made it terrible, moon-haunted.  Its door, low lighted, stood open to the night.

Rowcliffe drew back from the threshold to let a woman pass out.  Looking up, he was aware that he had seen her again.  He supposed it was the light of that detestable moon that gave her face its queer morbid whiteness.

She went by without seeing him, clenching her hands and carrying her young head high; and he saw that her eyes still held the tears that she was afraid to spill.

Mrs. Gale stood behind her with a lamp, lighting her passage.

“Who is that young lady?” he asked.

“T’ Vicar’s laass, Gwanda.”

The woman leaned to him and whispered, “She’s seen t’ body.”

And in the girl’s fear and blindness and defiance he saw the pride of her youth beaten and offended by that which it had seen.

Out there, in the bridle path leading from the high road to the farm, the cart had stopped.  The men were lifting the coffin out, shouldering it, carrying it along.  He saw Gwenda Cartaret swerve out of their way.  Presently he heard her running down the road.

Then he remembered what he had been sent for.

He turned his attention to Mrs. Gale.  She was a square-set, blunt-featured woman of forty-five or so, who had once been comely like her daughter Essy.  Now her soft chin had sagged; in her cheeks the stagnant blood crawled through a network of little veins, and the gloss had gone from her dark hair.  Her brown eyes showed a dull defiance and deprecation of the human destiny.

“Where is he?” he said.

“Oop there, in t’ room wi’ ’s feyther.”

“Been drinking again, or what?”

“Naw, Dr. Rawcliffe, ’e ‘assn’t.  I suddn’ a sent for yo all this road for nowt.”

She drew him into the house place, and whispered.

“I’m feared ’e’ll goa queer in ’is ’head, like.  ‘E’s sot there by t’ body sence yesterda noon.  ’E’s not takken off ’is breeches for tree daas.  ’E caaun’t sleap; ’e wunna eat and ’e wunna drink.  There’s work to be doon and ‘e wunna lay haand to it.  Wull yo goa oop t’ ’im, Dr. Rawcliffe?”

Rowcliffe went up.

XIII

In the low lighted room the thing that Gwenda Cartaret had seen lay stretched in the middle of the great bed, covered with a sheet.  The bed, with its white mound, was so much too big for the four walls that held it, the white plaster of the ceiling bulging above it stooped so low, that the body of John Greatorex lay as if already closed up in its tomb.