“Was she ever in Canada?”

“Yes!” said Halsey with sudden decision, “she wor—­for she told me one day when I wor mendin’ the new reaper and binder, that we in this country didn’t know what harvest meant.  ’Why, I’ve helped to reap a field—­in Canada,’ she ses, ‘fower miles square,’ she ses, ‘six teams o’ horses—­an’ six horses to the team,’ she ses—­’that’s somethin’ like.’  So I know she’s been in Canada.”

“Ah!” said Dempsey, staring at the carpet.  “And she’s not married?  You’re sure she’s not married?”

“Married?” said all the others, looking at him in disapproving astonishment.

“Well, if she ain’t, I saw her sister—­or her double—­twice—­about two-and-a-half year ago—­at a place thirty miles from Winnipeg.  I could ha’ sworn I’d seen her before!”

“Well, you can’t ha’ seen her before,” said Betts positively; “cause she’s Miss, not Missis.”

“Ah!” said Dempsey again in a non-committal voice, looking hard this time into the fire.

“Where have you seen her—­in these parts?” asked Mrs. Halsey.

“At the Harvest Festival, t’other day.  But I must have been mistaken—­that’s all.  I think I’m going to call upon her some day.”

“Whatever for?”

“Why—­to tell her about my grandfather!” said Dempsey, looking round at Mrs. Halsey, with an air of astonishment that any one should ask him the question.

“You won’t be welcome.”

“Why not?”

“Because she don’t want to hear nothin’ about Watson’s murder.  And whatever’s the good on it, anyhow?” said Mrs. Halsey with sudden emphasis.  “You’ve told us a good tale, I’ll grant ye.  But yer might as well be pullin’ the old feller ‘isself out of his grave, as goin’ round killin’ ‘im every night fresh, as you be doin’.  Let ’im be.  Skelintons is skelintons.”

Dempsey, feeling rather indignantly that his pains had been wasted, and his audience was not worthy of him, rose to take his departure.  Halsey’s face cleared.  He turned to look at his wife, and she winked in return.  And when the young forester had taken his departure, Mrs. Halsey stroked the red flannel round her swollen neck complacently.

“I ’ad to pike ’im out soomhow.  It’s ’igh time she wor put to bed!”

That same evening, Ellesborough left the Ralstone camp behind him about six o’clock, and hurried through the late October evening towards Great End Farm.  During the forty-eight hours which had elapsed since his interview with Rachel he had passed through much suffering, and agonies of indecision.  He had had to reconstruct all his ideas of the woman he loved.  Instead of the proud and virginal creature he had imagined himself to be wooing, amid the beautiful setting of her harvest fields, he had to think of her as a woman dimmed and besmirched by an unhappy marriage with a bad man.  For himself, he certainly resented the concealment which had been practised on him.  Yet at the same time he thought he understood the state of exasperation, of invincible revolt which had led to it.  And he kept reminding himself that, after all, her confession had anticipated his proposal.